Lori Yue

Lori Qingyuan Yue is an Associate Professor of Management at Columbia Business School and a senator of Columbia University. Her research examines the interplay among business, society, and government, with a focus on how firms respond to contentious social environments, regulatory uncertainty, and international geopolitical dynamics. 

Her earlier work explored how U.S. commercial banks in the pre-Federal Reserve era self-regulated and organized collective business action to mitigate financial crises. She has also studied how social movement activism affects the expansion of large corporations such as Walmart and Target, and how these firms adapt to external social pressures. In addition, she has explored the role of the state in the expansion and contraction of moral markets.

Her recent research advances three main streams. First, she investigates how firms navigate the challenges of deglobalization and the resurgence of nationalism. She has developed a theory of organizational nationalism and used AI and Large Language Models to construct computational measures of nationalism at the firm level (see here for the paper, code, and data). Her work has received both academic recognition and media attention. She also co-founded the Nation and Nationalism Research Network, a community of interdisciplinary scholars examining the evolving role of nation and nationalism in business, society, and geopolitics. 

Second, she investigates how multinational corporations manage controversial sociopolitical issues in host countries, including those tied to global geopolitics or local political and cultural tensions. Third, she studies how firms—especially those in emerging technology sectors—develop novel political strategies to influence regulation. Her research has examined how digital platforms mobilize users to shape policy debates and how the nascent industry ventures has engaged in collective lobbying to influence regulatory authority.

Professor Yue’s research has been featured in leading peer-reviewed scholarly journals and has earned numerous awards and recognitions from the Academy of Management (AOM), Responsible Research in Business & Management (RRBM), the Strategic Management Society (SMS), the Academy of International Business (AIB), INFORMS, and the Law and Society Association. Her work has also been cited in prominent media outlets, including The New York Times, The Economist, The Washington Post, CNBC, Forbes, and Yahoo! Finance. She previously served as an associate editor of Management Science, a consulting editor for the American Journal of Sociology, a special issue editor for Management and Organization Review, and Chair of the Organizational Management and Theory Research Committee at AOM.

Professor Yue has taught at the PhD, MBA, EMBA, Executive Education, and undergraduate levels. In the CBS MBA and EMBA programs, she teaches Top Management Process, a popular elective that explores the multifaceted role of general managers in shaping strategy, operations, and organizational leadership in both entrepreneurial and established firms. In fall 2025, she launched Global Enterprise Management, a new course designed to equip students with the core principles and practices necessary for managing global enterprises in an increasingly complex international business landscape, addressing challenges such as geopolitical tensions and trade policies. 

Within Columbia Business School Executive Education, she serves as a Faculty Director for executive education programs. She leads the Global Business Strategy module, which examines how corporations create and capture value in global contexts through both market and nonmarket strategies.

Before joining CBS, Professor Yue was a tenured professor at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business and Sociology Department. There, she taught the undergraduate core course Strategic Management, served as course head, and spearheaded its redesign. She also taught short MBA courses and the PhD seminar in Organizational Theory. She won both teaching and research awards for her contributions.