Zhang Yonghong Professorship in Economics and Strategy

Organisational economics is the application of economic logic and methods to understand the nature, design and performance of organisations, especially managed ones like business firms giving them a working advantage, according to the Society for Institutional & Organizational Economics.

However, when companies have a negative shock, like a product failure or a drop in revenues, one of the ways they get back on track is by implementing standard procedures to solve the problem. The adoption of such standardised processes helps the firm survive the current shock but inflicts inefficiencies and lowers its future adaptability. Although the firm may recover, it becomes more vulnerable to future shocks, and consequently, more reliant on the standardised work procedures.

Professor Jin Li is the Area Head of Management and Strategy at HKU Business School, The University of Hong Kong (HKU), and the Zhang Yonghong Professor in Economics and Strategy. Professor Li's main research area lies at the intersection of organisational, personnel, and labour economics, and how they can better work together.

His work focuses on the dynamics of informal relationships and explores how firms can design organisations to align incentives and build trust. This research shows how organisational design can be a source of competitive advantage. Recently, Professor Li has studied topics on the digital economy, including causality issues in machine learning algorithms and blockchain governance.

One of Professor Li’s breakthroughs has been to identify that it is not possible to have a so-called “organisational trilemma” of decentralisation, autonomy and organizational efficiency at the same time as there must some degree of flexibility for them to be effective.

Professor Li believes his research will help us to further understand how organisations work, how businesses can improve organisational efficiency, and help build enduring organisations. He is leading the research on the non-monetary human aspects of organisational economics in academic terms. In particular, he is working on how we can design organisations to create more opportunities for young people.

Professor Li earned his BA in Economics and Math (with high honours) from Wesleyan University, a BSc in Applied Math (with honours) from Caltech and a PhD in Economics from MIT.

Before HKU, he taught at the Kellogg School of Management and the London School of Economics (LSE), where he was a tenured associate professor of managerial economics and strategy. During his tenure at LSE, Professor Li won the Management Department teaching prize in 2018. He has also won other awards over the years, including the HKU EMBA Outstanding Teaching Award 2021, the HKU FBE Faculty Outstanding Teaching Award (Postgraduate Teaching) 2020, and the MIT Presidential Fellowship 2002-2004.

Professor Li has been published in leading academic journals such as the American Economic Review (AER), the Review of Economic Studies, American Economic Journal (AEJ)- Microeconomics, the Journal of Economic Theory, the Journal of Labor Economics, Management Science, and the RAND Journal of Economics.

Currently, he is an Associate Editor at Management Science. Professor Li's works have also been featured in media outlets such as the BBC, the Economist, and Quartz, and he has written for Harvard Business Review, Caixin, FTChinese, and Project Syndicate.

Professor Li has acted as a reviewer for 30 journals, including AER, Econometrica, Journal of Political Economy (JPE), Quarterly Journal of Economics (QJE), and ReStud. He has also reviewed grant proposals for the National Science Foundation of the US (NSF) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Professor Li served as an external PhD examiner for the Norwegian School of Economics.