Shaomin Li
Professor of Management
Old Dominion University
Dr. Shaomin Li joined Old Dominion University in 2002 and is a Professor of Management. He also serves as an Associate Editor of Corporate Governance: An International Review. Dr. Li’s scholarship covers fields that are intrinsically related ranging from political economy, governance, investment, management, and firm performance. The main research question Dr. Li addresses is how the political, economic, and social institutions affect business activities and firm performance across countries. Through his research on this issue, Professor Li has become one of the leading scholars in international business studies. Based on a survey of publications from 1995 to 2005 in the top-tier journals in international business, conducted by a research group at Michigan State University, the host of the Academy of International Business, Dr. Li is among the 89 “most prolific scholars” in the world in his field.
One of his main contributions to international business research is his framework of governance environment, which can classify all the countries in the world based on the political, economic, and social institutions that facilitate or constrain how people govern their business activities in a country. Based on this framework, he and his co-authors coined a pair of terms to describe the two major types of societies in the world: rule-based and relation-based societies. The framework demonstrates under what conductions each type of governance may be efficient and how societies evolve from relation-based to rule-based governance. Using this framework, many phenomena that were previously difficult to explain, such as why countries with poor legal system (i.e., relation-based) attract relatively large amounts of foreign direct investment can be clearly and logically explained. As a result, the framework has been well received by the international business community.
The Economist featured Dr. Li’s framework twice.
Professor Li has taught at the City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, National Sun Yat-sen University (Taiwan), Peking University, and Yonsei University (Korea). He served as a director of AT&T EastGate Services and was the founding CEO of a Hong Kong IT firm with subsidiaries in China.
Dr. Li’s expertise has made him a much sought-after speaker by academic institutions, government, and the media. He has given talks at Harvard University and Princeton University, provided expert testimonies at Congress, and appeared on CNN and FoxNews. His commentaries appeared in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
Professor Li graduated from Peking University, received his doctorate from Princeton University, and was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University. He now lives in Norfolk with his wife (Amy) Yingli Liu and daughter Diana, 16, who is an avid cello player.
