معرفی
Alexander Kowalski is an Assistant Professor in the Human Resource Studies department at Cornell University's ILR School. His research investigates how to support good quality jobs in challenging business environments, with a focus on e-commerce fulfillment centers. He examines managerial practices such as scheduling and performance pay, and the impact of robotic automation on workers. Kowalski employs field experiments and interviews to develop practical solutions that balance business needs with worker well-being, which he integrates into his teaching of courses on high-road HR strategies and job quality.
Kowalski holds a PhD from MIT and a Master's in City Planning from UC-Berkeley. Prior to his academic career, he worked as an economics reporter for Bloomberg News.
His primary research areas include job quality, employee voice, workplace scheduling, and robotic automation in warehousing. Kowalski's work reveals how managerial strategies in e-commerce fulfillment centers often shift business risks onto workers, leading to unpredictable schedules that disproportionately affect disadvantaged employees and harm firm performance. He demonstrates that participatory interventions, such as Health and Well-Being Committees (HaWCs), can reduce turnover and improve psychological well-being by incorporating worker input into workplace problem-solving.
His published research in leading journals like ILR Review and Annual Review of Organizational Psychology explores the changing dynamics of labor-management conflict, the evolution of employment relationships, and innovative approaches to negotiating a new social contract for work. These works highlight the increasing multiplicity of worker identities and the growing distance between management and labor, while proposing practical solutions through participatory simulations and employee voice mechanisms. His ongoing work extends these themes to e-commerce warehousing, examining the real-world impacts of collaborative robots and scheduling practices.
