Shinan Wang

PhD Candidate · Management & Organizations & Sociology
Kellogg School of Management · Northwestern University

I study how technology reshapes work, careers, and the value of human capital. As new technologies arrive, whose expertise gains value and whose loses it?

In my job market paper, I show that major technological revolutions reshape career hierarchies by opening temporary mobility windows: when a new technology arrives, past accomplishments stop signaling future contribution, and junior workers move past senior peers. In a paper published in Administrative Science Quarterly, my coauthors and I show that remote work raises the skills and qualifications employers require.

Technology is one force that changes what talent is worth to a firm. The social fabric of work is another. Across more than 100 countries, I study how social capital, family ties, and national identity shape who firms hire, who collaborates, and who becomes an entrepreneur. This matters most for firms managing a global workforce, whether across countries or in a single office.

My work combines large-scale data and computational methods with historical archives, online experiments, and qualitative interviews.

I am on the 2026–2027 academic job market.