About
I am a PhD candidate at MIT Sloan school of management, affiliated with the Institute for Work and Employment Research. I study organizational change, including changes in the organization of work tasks, managerial practices, and corporate involvement in socio-political activism. I am particularly interested in how firms respond to technological, economic, legal, and political envrionments. My research also investigates various phenomena that affect working conditions and workplace inequality, such as informal workplace social relations, algorithmic control, and social activism. I graduated with a M.A. in Computational Social Science from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in English Language and Literature from Tsinghua University. You can reach me at ditong@mit.edu.
Working Paper
Beyond Wage and Employment: Do Minimum Wage Mandates Affect Management Practices?
(MS thesis, MIT Sloan)
Last Updated: June 2024
Abstract (click to expand): Extensive research has examined the impact of minimum wages on employment. Yet less explored is whether and how these mandatory wage increases affect the broader spectrum of management practices and job quality. Compensating differentials theory posits that low-wage employers will diminish non-wage amenities to counteract the added labor costs. Conversely, the high-road strategy literature anticipates firms to enhance crucial aspects of job quality to optimize worker productivity. To assess these contrasting hypotheses, I used matched U.S. employee-employer job reviews and ratings to measure management quality in both general terms and across three specific dimensions: schedule quality, investment in employees (training, career opportunity, and relational investment), and employee input (autonomy and voice). I conducted difference-in-differences analyses based on multiple state-mandated minimum wage hikes spanning 2015-2021. The analyses show that as firms comply with mandates to raise wages, they, on average, neither compromise job quality in non-wage aspects nor undergo a thorough management system upgrade in the high-road direction. These findings align with organizational inertia theories and provide evidence of the barriers to high-road diffusion. Specifically, economic and policy pressure can be insufficient to cause strategic adoption of high-road employment systems. This study carries significant policy implications as the first comprehensive evaluation of minimum wage mandates on low-wage job quality. On one hand, it alleviates concerns regarding a negative spillover effect of mandatory wage increases on overall job quality. On the other hand, it highlights the limitations of minimum wage mandates in fostering systematic enhancements in working conditions beyond mere wage adjustments.
(with Lingfei Wu and James Evans)
Last Updated: December 2023
Abstract (click to expand): Substantial scholarship has estimated the susceptibility of jobs to automation, but little has examined how job contents evolve in the information age as new technologies substitute for tasks, shifting required skills rather than eliminating entire jobs. Here we explore patterns and consequences of changes in occupational skill and characterize occupations and workers subject to the greatest re-skilling pressure. Recent work found that changing skill requirements are greatest for STEM occupations. Nevertheless, analyzing 167 million online job posts covering 727 occupations over the last decade, we find that re-skilling pressure is greatest for low-skilled occupations when accounting for distance between skills. We further investigate the differences in skill change across employer and market size, as well as social demographic groups, and find that these differences tend to widen the economic divide. Jobs from large employers and markets experienced less change relative to small employers and markets, and non-white workers in low-skilled jobs are most demographically vulnerable. We conclude by showcasing our model’s potential to precisely chart job evolution towards machine-interface integration using skill embedding spaces.
Replication Files
Between-firm Inequality and Informal Social Relations
(with Nathan Wilmers and Victoria Zhang)
Last Updated: November 2023
Revise and resubmit, American Journal of Sociology
Abstract (click to expand): Employer investment, social closure, peer networks: substantial research highlights sharp differences in informal social structure across workplaces. Yet, research on pay inequality between firms has largely neglected these differences, in favor of more easily measurable features like firm size or ownership structure. We show how three types of workplace social relations shape firm pay setting: employer relational investment; social closure as a source of bargaining power; and workplace friendships that lock workers into jobs despite low pay. To operationalize these concepts, we draw on text data from a large archive of job reviews. Variance decomposition analyses show that differences in social relations account for up to 20% of overall inequality in between-firm pay premiums and 7% of residual inequality. Differences in informal social organization, and not just formal organization, predict pay differences between firms.
Publication
(with Thomas A. Kochan, Janice R. Fine, Kate Bronfenbrenner, Suresh Naidu, Jacob Barnes, Yaminette Diaz-Linhart, John Kallas, Jeonghun Kim, Arrow Minster, Phela Townsend, and Danielle Twiss)
Work and Occupations 50, no. 3 (2023): 335-350.
Abstract (click to expand): American workers are currently engaged in an upsurge in collective actions aimed at achieving a stronger voice and representation at work; this desire for increased voice at work is also evident in survey data. However, union organizing drives in the United States typically meet with strong employer resistance, and such resistance reduces the likelihood that the organizing effort will be successful. In addition to unions, a broad array of other efforts has been initiated to strengthen worker voice and representation. The authors discuss these efforts, including worker centers, and observe that there is no “one size fits all” approach to contemporary worker organizing.
Full Report Version
Work in Progress
Firm and Worker Responses to the Anti-Woke Movement
Algorithmic Control on Social Media Platforms and Fan Economy
(with Chen Liang)
Teaching
MIT Kaufman Teaching Certification Program (2024 Spring)
TA for MIT Sloan’s 15.665 Power and Negotiation (2023 Spring)
