Alex Kowalski is an assistant professor in the Human Resource Studies department at Cornell University’s ILR School.
Alex studies how to support good quality jobs in challenging business environments. His research takes place primarily inside e-commerce fulfillment centers, where demand volatility and intense time pressures often give rise to unpredictable work schedules that employees feel to be out of their control. Using a variety of research methods ranging from interviews to field experiments, he shows how certain managerial cultures generate problematic schedules, how these schedules tend to accrue to already disadvantaged employees, and how these schedules are costly to employers.
Fulfillment centers are part of the rapidly evolving warehousing industry. A setting replete with contrasts, warehouses are employing more and more people as e-commerce grows yet are also sites where concerns about job quality are primary and innovation in robotics is proceeding apace. In addition to his focus on scheduling practices, Alex is also carrying out projects inside warehouses that look into the challenges of implementing performance pay systems, competing approaches to robotic automation, and the benefits of involving employees in workplace problem-solving.
Alex’s earlier work takes a broader look at the changing nature of work and organizations and has been published in ILR Review, Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, and Negotiation Journal.
He received his PhD from MIT. He also holds a Master’s in City Planning from UC-Berkeley. Before graduate school, he was an economics reporter for Bloomberg News.
Research
Riordan, C. A., & Kowalski, A. M. (2021). From bread and roses to #MeToo: Multiplicity, distance, and the changing dynamics of conflict in IR theory. ILR Review, 74(3), 580–606.Show abstract
A central assumption in industrial relations theory is that conflict is rooted in an enduring difference between the interests of labor and management. In recent years, the reality of work has changed for many, and scholarship has called attention to overlooked dimensions of conflict that depart from this assumption. The authors account for these developments with the concepts of multiplicity and distance. Multiplicity means that a broad range of actors bring diverse goals, tied to identities and values in addition to interests, to the employment relationship. The competing and fluid motivations that stem from these goals alter how actors individually and collectively name conflict. Distance reflects a growing rift between those who control work and those who labor, rooted in prevailing organizational forms and practices and the transformation of institutions. Distance alters actors’ interdependence and their perceived and actual power in addressing conflict. From these observations, the authors derive propositions suggesting directions for research and theory regarding conflict and the institutions through which actors balance goals.
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This article reviews work and employment research, paying particular attention to theory and applications by scholars in organizational psychology and organizational behavior (OP/OB) and employment or industrial relations (ER), with the objective of better understanding employee and labor-management relationships. Our animating premise is that juxtaposing these two research traditions provides a stronger basis for analyzing these relationships today. OP/OB offer micro- and meso-level focuses, whereas ER focuses on organizations, collective actors, and labor markets, with an emphasis on historical context. We hope this review motivates efforts to think about and build new social and psychological contracts that are attuned to the evolving dynamics present in the economy, workforce, and society. To this end, we look to the future and propose ways of deepening, broadening, and accelerating the pace of research that might lead to useful changes in practices, institutions, and public policies.
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A massive open online course (MOOC) entitled “Shaping the Future of Work” (offered through MITx, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s online learning division) has been the context for a multiparty simulation designed to produce classroom negotiation results that will have social impacts. After running the course in the MOOC context three times and in face‐to‐face settings eight times, we noticed that key themes emerged. Participants have brought their own workforce perspectives to their simulation roles as employers, worker representatives, elected officials, and educators. They have called for reciprocal agreements centered on fair treatment and representation in the workplace, improved organizational performance, investments in skills and capabilities, aligned rewards and benefits for workers, and work–life balance in communities. We continue to use the simulation in the classroom and are exploring ways to expand its use. In the meantime, in this article, we discuss how the insights gleaned from this simulation could be used to crystallize and advance a new social contract at a time when the public policies, institutions, and organizational practices governing employment relations have not kept up with the dramatic changes taking place in the workforce, nature of work, and overall economy.