Profile
Matt is a sociologist and political economist focusing on work, organisations, employment relations, labour markets, capitalist growth regimes, and capitalist crises.
He has a PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Matt has been a postdoctoral fellow at the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, a research fellow at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society, and a visiting researcher at the Department of Management, Paris Dauphine University, Paris, and a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne.
Research
Matt has two primary research streams. The first is on work organisation and human resource management, focusing on job quality, employee involvement, lean management and organisational performance. The second is on the comparative political economy of western capitalism, focusing on growth regimes, labour markets, stagnation and crisis. Matt works across disciplines, developing synthetic theories drawing from sociology of work, organizational sociology, human resource management, employment relations, comparative political economy, and heterodox economics, including marxist theory, evolutionary economics, and post-keynesian theory.
In addition to numerous journal articles and book chapters, Matt is author or editor of:
- Management Divided: Contradictions of labor management. Oxford University Press (2022).
- The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx. Oxford University Press (2019; co-edited with Tony Smith, Tomás Rotta and Paul Prew).
- Comparative Political Economy of Work. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan (2014; co-edited with Marco Hauptmeier).
- Organizing Prosperity: Union Effects on Job Quality, Community Betterment, and Industry Standards. Washington DC: Economic Policy Institute (2009; with David Kusnet).
Interests and activities
Matt is currently co-organizer of Network H: Markets, Firms and Institutions, Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. He has done extensive panel and conference organising with the American Sociological Association, European Group for Organizational Studies, and the International Labour Process Conference.
Matt is the founder and former editor-in-chief (2011-19) of Work in Progress, a public sociology blog of the American Sociological Association on the economy, work and inequality. He is founder and former commissioning editor (2017-20) of the Marxist Sociology Blog, another public sociology blog of the ASA.
Current PhD / research supervisions
- Vanessa Brown, “Entrepreneurship for Social Change: How do Black activists use entrepreneurship as a vehicle for social change?” (co-supervisor with Angela Martinez Dy), Loughborough University London
- Fatima Farakhdust, “Racial bias toward immigrants in Magistrates' courts decisions in the United Kingdom” (co-supervisor with Tim Oliver)
- Ian Hill, “Teamwork and collaboration across occupations” (co-supervisor with Clive Trusson), Loughborough University London
- Melek Kucukuzun, “Elite configuration and media ownership under right-wing populism in Turkey,” (co-supervisor with Thomas Tufte), Loughborough University London
Completed PhD / research supervisions
- Nicos Moushouttas, “Worker Cooperatives as Alternative Economies within Capitalism: Organisational Variation and Democratic Decision-Making” (co-supervisor with Merve Sancak; external supervisor: Jukka Rintamäki), Loughborough University London
- Giga Giorgadze, “The Dynamics of Public Healthcare Policy Change in Post-soviet Georgia,” King’s College London (co-supervisor with Juan Baeza), 2021
- Bo-Yi Lee, “Variations in Employee Training and Participation in the Taiwanese ICT Industry: An Institutional Logics Perspective,” King’s Business School, King’s College London (co-supervisor with Andreas Kornelakis), 2021
- Seyed Mousavi, “The Social Reproduction of Iranian Elites: A Case Study of an Elite School,” King’s Business School, King’s College London (first supervisor; second supervisor: Johann Fortwengel), 2020
- Farhad Mehraban, “Supply Chain Knowledge Creation: Applications of organizational knowledge creation theory,” Department of Management, King’s College London (first supervisor; second supervisor: Pervez Ghauri), 2013
- Hsiao-Wen Ho, “Knowledge Transfer, Organisational Learning, and the Performance of International Strategic Alliances: A Co-evolutionary Perspective,” Department of Management, King’s College London (second supervisor; first supervisor: Pervez Ghauri), 2011