Chinas capitalist transformation: The rhetoric that mattered

About Yuan Li

Dr. Yuan Li is a business professor specializing in management strategy and organization theory. She obtained her PhD from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on the rhetoric and semiotics of institutional and organizational change. She has published in leading management journals such as the Academy of Management Journal Academy of Management Review Journal of Management Studies Journal of Management Inquiry Journal of Business Ethics Management Communication Quarterly and Culture and Organization among others. She serves on the Editorial Board of Organization Studies.Having grown up in China and spent an equal number of years living in North America Yuan takes both an indigenous perspective and an outsider view on China. This dual approach helps uncover the cultural meanings associated with the extraordinary changes in economic and organizational systems. To her the enigma of China can only be explained by looking at the Chinese rhetoric: the tone style content and symbolism. A disclaimer: As a management scholar her research on China is expected to contribute to the study of organizations and institutions a field characterized by theorizing and building conceptual modelsso forgive the sections on theory.