Professor Yanjie Bian is one of the most important contributors to the field of Chinese management and is a pioneer in the areas of Chinese guanxi, social networks, and social inequality. Since receiving his PhD in sociology in 1990, Professor Bian has devoted his academic career in furthering our knowledge of the Chinese society and economic sociology. In the past three decades, Professor Bian appeared many times on Elsevier’s Top Ten most-cited Chinese researchers in social science. With his deep knowledge of Chinese culture and the theory and methods of network analysis, Professor Bian’s scholarship has significantly enhanced our understanding of the development, outcomes, and boundary conditions of Chinese guanxi. Professor Bian’s long, outstanding contributions to the science and practice of Chinese management can be found in this profile below.

Professor Bian is a professor in the Department of Sociology of the University of Minnesota and concurrently the director of the Institute for Empirical Social Science Research at Xi’an Jiaotong University. Previously, Professor Bian held a faculty position at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Professor Bian holds a PhD in sociology from State University of New York at Albany, a MA in law (sociology) and a BA in philosophy from Nankai University.  Professor Bian has published 20 books (6 in English and 14 in Chinese), including Guanxi: How China Works, and 170 journal articles and book chapters, including publications in American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Annual Review of Sociology, Chinese Social Sciences, and Management and Organization Review. Professor Bian has been cited almost 12,000 times from Google Scholar and is among the most cited researchers in the area of Chinese management. He has received numerous research awards and grants from the US and China and has been invited as speakers at international conferences and institutions.

Professor Bian has also made substantial contributions to the Chinese management community. He has provided leadership to many Chinese research associations, including serving as President of the Chinese Association for Social Networks and Social Capital Research and Chair of the Asia and Asian-American Section of the American Sociological Association. He was a major contributor to the establishment of the Chinese General Social Survey. At Xi’an Jiaotong University, he served as the Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science (2009-2017) and the Founding Director of the Institute for Empirical Social Science Research (since 2009). At Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, he served as the Founding Director of the Survey Research Center, the Associate Dean for the School of Humanities and Social Science, and the Head of the Social Science division. Since 2003, Professor Bian has been serving as either a Senior Editor or a Senior Consulting Editor of Management and Organization Review. In addition, he served as a Consulting Editor of American Journal of Sociology and an editorial board member of multiple premier sociology journals, such as American Sociological Review. Professor Bian has also devoted tremendous time and effort to develop the next generation of Chinese management scholars and to advance Chinese education. He has chaired many graduate students’ thesis committees, published textbooks with recognized national influence, and developed classes that have won teaching awards in China.