Michael Dunn
Associate Professor
Department of Management and Business
Skidmore College

Michael Dunn

I study how AI and digital platforms are changing the nature of work — what happens to individuals, careers, and organizations when algorithms match people to jobs, set the terms of work, and mediate the relationship between worker and firm.

I am a management scholar with a sociologist's training and a product manager's past. My research sits at the intersection of technology, organizations, and work: a seven-year longitudinal study of careers built inside algorithmically managed labor markets, an NSF-funded project designing AI tools with and for the workers those markets tend to overlook, and new work on how algorithmic systems reshape the meaning of a job. Before academia I spent a decade in technology product management and workforce training, and the questions that drove that work still drive this one: who benefits when technology changes how work gets done, and who bears the cost?

Current Projects

AI Tools for the Workers Algorithms Manage

An NSF-funded, three-year human-centered design project building AI-enhanced tools that help online workers manage profiles, workload, and performance inside algorithmically governed labor markets.

NSF #2403251 · 2024–2027

Careers Under Algorithmic Management

A longitudinal panel of 70 online workers followed since 2019 — more than 450 interviews — tracing how careers, identities, and organizations take shape when a platform's algorithms stand between worker and firm.

NSF #2121638 · with Steve Sawyer (Syracuse)

Organizations Born on Platforms

Interviews with founders who built agencies inside Upwork, examining how digital infrastructure shapes entrepreneurial orientation, founder skills, and organizational form.

Skidmore Faculty Research Grant

Selected Publications

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