Faculty
Thomas A. Kochan is the Post-Tenure George Maverick Bunker Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and a faculty member in the MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research.
Kochan focuses on the need to update America's work and employment policies, institutions, and practices to catch up with a changing workforce and economy. His recent work calls attention to the need for a new social contract at work, one that anticipates and engages current and future technological changes in ways that build a more inclusive economy and broadly shared prosperity. Through empirical research, he demonstrates that fundamental changes in the quality of employee and labor‐management relations are needed to address America's critical problems in industries ranging from healthcare to airlines to manufacturing. His most recent book is Shaping the Future of Work: A Handbook for Action and a New Social Contract (Routledge, 2021).
He is a member of the National Academy of Human Resources, the National Academy of Arbitrators, and past president of the International Industrial Relations Association and the Industrial Relations Research Association. Currently he is member of the MIT Task Force on Work of the Future.
Kochan holds a BBA in personnel management as well as an MS and a PhD in industrial relations from the University of Wisconsin.
Kochan, Thomas. The Hill, August 2, 2023.
Kochan, Thomas, Janice R. Fine, Kate Bronfenbrenner, Suresh Naidu, Jacob Barnes, Yaminette Diaz-Linhart, John Kallas, Jeonghun Kim, Arrow Minster, Di Tong, Phela Townsend, and Danielle Twiss. Work and Occupations Vol. 50, No. 3 (2023): 335-350.
Bahat, Roy E., Thomas Kochan, and Liba Wenig Rubenstein. Harvard Business Review, July 2023.
Bahat, Roy E., and Thomas A. Kochan. Harvard Business Review, January 6, 2023.
Gittell, Jody Hoffer, John August, and Thomas Kochan. The Dallas Morning News, January 5, 2023.
Kochan, Thomas. Fortune, September 6, 2022.
This Hot Labor Summer, workers are demanding not just increased wages, but what labor expert Thomas Kochan calls “a new social contract.”
An AI productivity boom is coming. Here’s what managers need to know to roll out intelligent technology that’s ethical and worker-centric.
"I don't think these employer actions will insulate these companies from getting organized."
"The strike threat is back as a bargaining tool, but we're seeing action limited by size and length, rather than the all-or-nothing strike."
"It’s very difficult to organize in the face of serious and significant management opposition."
"These successes are a reflection of the workforce’s strong expectations and the workforce’s demands to make up for lost ground."
This course aims to prepare you, and your organization, for an evolving workplace as it investigates its impact on social, legal, and economic policy. Over six weeks, you’ll explore the reasons why workplace advancements require a new, updated social contract — the mutual expectations and obligations workers, employers, and society have for work relationships — so that the quality of jobs can be improved, inequalities can be addressed, and everyone can prosper.
Digital transformation marks a radical rethinking of how technology, people, and processes combine to create and deliver value. This exciting digital transformation education course introduces the concept of Algorithmic Business Thinking as a toolkit, mindset and digital language for uniting and augmenting your human and digital capabilities that helps you discover and uncover new opportunities throughout your digital transformation journey.
