Faculty
Zeynep Ton is a Professor of the Practice at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Zeynep's research focuses on how organizations can design and manage their operations in a way that satisfies employees, customers, and investors simultaneously. Her work has been published in a variety of journals, including Organization Science, Production and Operations Management, and the Harvard Business Review.
In 2014, Zeynep published her findings in a book, The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits. The book draws on 15 years of research to show that the key to offering good jobs to employees, great service to customers, and superior returns to investors is combining investment in employees with specific operational choices that increase employees’ productivity, contribution, and motivation.
After her book was released, company exeutives started reaching out to Zeynep to understand how to implement the Good Jobs Strategy in their organizations, or to describe how they were already adopting the strategy. Zeynep cofounded the nonprofit Good Jobs Institute to help them transform through assessments, workshops, and longer term partnerships.
Prior to MIT Sloan, Zeynep spent seven years at Harvard Business School. She has received several awards for teaching excellence both at HBS and MIT Sloan.
Zeynep lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and four children. A native of Turkey, she first came to the US on a volleyball scholarship from the Pennsylvania State University. She received her BS in industrial and manufacturing engineering there and her DBA from the Harvard Business School.
Ton, Zeynep. Harvard Business Review, December 20, 2017.
Zeynep, Ton. Harvard Business Review, January 2012.
Rahmandad, Hazhir, and Zeynep Ton. Organization Science. Forthcoming. Supplementary Materials.
Ton, Zeynep. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2023.
Hashemian, Mahdi, Zeynep Ton, and Hazhir Rahmandad, MIT Sloan Working Paper 6056-19. Cambridge, MA: MIT Sloan School of Management, September 2021.
Ton, Zeynep, and Sarah Kalloch. Harvard Business Review, January 2, 2017.
A good jobs system prioritizes customers and is designed to maximize employees’ productivity, motivation, and contributions.
How to define the right KPIs, why toxic culture is driving turnover, and more insights for leading in 2022.
"Companies end up paying a hefty price for low people investment."
"At most companies we've worked with, the people in upstream functions rarely considered the impact their decisions would have on the front line.
"If good jobs can make companies more competitive, more resilient, and more humane, why don't more companies create them?"
A shaken management class is thinking harder about the costs of neglecting frontline staff.
For many companies, the topic of sustainability is at the forefront of business agendas. Consumers and stakeholders are demanding greater accountability from organizations, and the regulatory environment is becoming increasingly stringent. However, pursuing the environmental, social, and governance impacts of business is often met with tension. Leaders now need to manage the misconception within business that meeting sustainability goals means compromising profits.
