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. Fortune, September 6, 2022.
Kochan, Thomas, and Wilma Liebman. WBUR Cognoscenti, September 5, 2022.
Kochan, Thomas A. New England Journal of Public Policy Vol. 34, No. 1 (2022).
Thomas Kochan, Janice R. Fine, Kate Bronfenbrenner, Suresh Naidu, Jacob Barnes, Yaminette Diaz-Linhart, Johnnie Kallas, Jeonghun Kim, Arrow Minster, Di Tong, Phela Townsend, and Danielle Twiss. Cambridge, MA: June 2022.
Hertel-Fernandez, Alex, William Kimball, and Thomas Kochan. ILR Review Vol. 75, No. 2 (2022): 267-294. Appendix.
Bellace, Janice, Andrew Minster, Karen Scott, Erin L. Kelly, Thomas A. Kochan, Mari Sako, and Bruce E. Kaufman. ILR Review Vol. 74, No. 3 (2021): 798-826.
Hybrid work offers flexibility and opportunity, but without clear expectations and employee resources, managers risk a divided and disadvantaged workforce.
A panel of practitioners explores how to solve worker shortages and offers three best practices for success.
AB 257 will create pressure on low-paying firms to learn how to manage their businesses and workforce with high-road strategies.
"Analysis suggests that businesses can reduce turnover and increase productivity by working with unions to build labor-management relationships."
Employees can add value and expand the agenda that typical boards of directors discuss by bringing information from what the workforce is saying.
Thomas Kochan explains why some fears about unions are overblown, how workers form successful ones, and how leaders can partner with them.
Digital transformation marks a radical rethinking of how technology, people, and processes combine to create and deliver value. This exciting new 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.
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.
