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The Progress Network is based at the organization New America.

Zeynep
Ton

Professor, author

Zeynep writes about: Business, Work

If your job is making you miserable, you might want to have your boss call Zeynep Ton. Ton, a Professor of the Practice at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management, examines how organizations can design and manage their operations in a way that satisfies employees, customers, and investors simultaneously.

Ton cofounded the nonprofit Good Jobs Institute after publishing her first book, The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits, which draws on 15 years of research to explain the counterintuitive but effective strategy for transformation: combining investment in employees with specific operational choices that increase employees’ productivity, contribution, and motivation. The Institute helps businesses put this research into practice through assessments, workshops, and longer term partnerships.

Prior to MIT Sloan, Ton spent 7 years as an assistant professor in the Technology and Operations Management area at Harvard Business School. Her research has been published in managerial and scholarly journals including Harvard Business Review, California Management Review, and Organization Science, and she has been featured widely in the media, including in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and NPR.

Even in the lowest-price segment of retail, bad jobs are not a cost-driven necessity but a choice.

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