Yifan Zhong is currently a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the Department of Management and Organisations of UWA Business School and a Fellow of Centre for Business Data Analytics. He is also a Non-Resident Fellow of Centre for Development Economics and Sustainability at Monash Business School. Yifan is an external affiliate of the Emerging Markets Research group at the University of Sydney Business School. Before joining UWA Business School, Yifan worked as a Lecturer in the Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Strategy and International Business Discipline at Curtin University after receiving his PhD from Monash University. His work has been published in Energy Economics, Journal of Cleaner Production, Journal of Environmental Management, Journal of International Business Policy and Safety Science, among others.

Yifan's research interests focus on the interactions between organisations and policymakers. He aims to examine the impact of various environmental policies and explore organisations' strategic responses to changing institutional environments. Yifan is also interested in developing innovative business models to fit contemporary business dynamics and reflect disruptions of emerging technologies. His current projects involve energy transitions, sustainable practices, and the application of emerging technologies such as AI, big data and robots in organisations.

2024 Milne Visiting Professor Program Grant 

2023 UWA Business School Research Grant

         UWA Business School Early-Career Research Award

         UWA Business School Starter Research Grant

         Curtin School of Management and Marketing Development Funding

2022 Curtin Humanities and Social Sciences GSP Development Funding Award

2019 Monash Postgraduate Publications Award

2018 Monash Graduate Research Office Travel Grant

         Monash Faculty of Business and Economics Travel Grant

2015 Monash Business School Department of Management Student Fund

My research journey started by looking at how to manage expatriates because I wanted to be an expatriate, so I tried to find out about the life of expatriates. Being a foreigner entailed different career paths than host country employees, with its own pros and cons. My PhD looked at how multinationals manage foreignness in host countries at the organisational level, being affected by national policies, subnational incentives and firm capabilities. Multinationals might have liabilities of foreignness but could also be positioned to obtain advantages via interactions with institutions. 

Emerging technologies tend to significantly enhance productivity, which will in turn reshape the structure of organisations, economies, and societies. It is critical to create and obtain competitive advantages via policies, capabilities and strategies. However, this surge in productivity could also lead to a widening of income inequality, as indicated by an increased Gini coefficient. I want to balance the pursuit of efficiency and the imperative of fairness given the upcoming changes. Because sustainable growth is intricately linked to the effectiveness of equitable distribution in the long run.