Shaping the Future of Work: A Handbook for Action and a New Social Contract

Publication date: November 11, 2020

This book provides a clear roadmap for the roles workers and leaders in business, labor, education, and government must play in building a new social contract for all to prosper. It is a call to action for a collaborative effort to develop both high-quality jobs and strong, successful businesses while simultaneously overcoming the deep social and economic divisions that are all too apparent in society today.

Written by two leading and trusted experts in the field of employment and work from MIT and Cornell University, this book is a practical, action-oriented guide. Readers will feel empowered to take actions needed to shape a better future of work for themselves, their employees, their co-workers, and others they may represent. It emphasizes the need to fix America's broken social contract and reimagine a new one. The most important message of this book is that we have the ability to shape the work of the future by harnessing the power of new technologies.  

The book is essential reading for business executives, labor leaders and workforce advocates, government policy makers, politicians, and anyone who is interested in using emerging knowledge and technologies to drive innovation, creating high-quality jobs, and shaping a more broadly shared prosperity.


About the authors

Thomas A. Kochan is the co‐director of the MIT Sloan Institute for Work and Employment Research and is the George Maverick Bunker Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Lee Dyer is Emeritus Professor of Human Resource Studies and a research fellow with the Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies at the ILR School, Cornell University.