Electromagnetic (EM) scattering systems widely exist in EM engineering domain. For a certain objective scattering system, all of its working modes constitute a linear space, i.e. modal space. Characteristic mode theory (CMT) can effectively construct a basis of the space, i.e. characteristic modes (CMs), and the CMs only depend on the inherent physical properties of the objective system, such as the topological structure and the material parameter of the objective system. Thus, CMT is very valuable for analyzing and designing the inherent EM scattering characters of the objective system. This work finds out that integral equation (IE) is not the best framework for carrying CMT. This dissertation proposes a completely new framework for carrying CMT, i.e. work-energy principle (WEP) framework, and at the same time proposes a completely new method for constructing CMs, i.e. orthogonalizing driving power operator (DPO) method. In new WEP framework and based on new orthogonalizing DPO method, this work resolves 5 pairs of important unsolved problems existing in CMT domain.