Shaomin Li is among 12 college and university faculty from across the commonwealth who will be honored Feb. 20 in Richmond. They each will receive $5,000. This marks the 10th consecutive year that ODU has had a winner in the highly competitive program, which is funded by the Dominion Foundation. Twenty-two university faculty have been selected for the prestigious award since the program was established in 1991.

Shaomin Li didn't let others' opinions and actions get in the way of his educational pursuits. After Mao Tse Tung came to power, Li's family was one of many driven to the countryside. "I was sent to a farm when I was 13 and taught myself," he said.

Against all odds, Li completed his pre-college education through self-learning and ultimately passed a nationwide college entrance exam with the highest score in his region. It's an experience that has since motivated many of his students.

Li teaches international business, a subject that not only integrates a wide range of social and administrative theories, but also requires extensive practical experience. His rich business background enables him to shed light on how international trade and investment are actually conducted. He served as a director at AT&T in charge of developing the East Asian market, founding CEO of an Internet firm in Hong Kong with two subsidiaries in China, and adviser to a number of multinational firms.

His students are familiar with his "look forward, reason back" advice, which asks them to look forward to figure out what they want to do with their life, and reason back to prepare themselves step by step.

In his seminar on international business for all of the college's doctoral students, Li sets the bar high - requiring the first-year Ph.D. students to write a publishable research paper.

Li is a leading scholar in international business studies and has published several articles in the Journal of International Business Studies, the most prestigious publication in the field.

His main contribution to international business research came when he and his co-authors introduced a 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 investors govern their business activities in a country.

"For instance, in a country with strong rule of law, people rely on court to resolve disputes," Li explains, "whereas in countries in which judges are corrupt and partial, people settle disputes through private means, such as kidnapping."

Based on this framework, he and his co-authors coined the terms "rule-based" and "relation-based" to describe the two major types of societies in the world.

Recently, Li developed a new theory, using cases and statistical data, to explain why some countries, such as China, thrive despite corruption.

(Courtesy Old Dominion University News.)