josh wood





index
  1. about
  2. research interests
  3. work sample
  4. current projects
  5. research philosophy
  6. methods & frameworks



























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research interests


Josh Wood studies the cultural and psychological forces that define modern service work. His research begins with a simple idea. Frontline labor is a place where questions of identity and power appear with unusual clarity. He examines how workers understand themselves in settings shaped by pace and pressure and how organizations create systems that influence those experiences.

His scholarship brings together intersectionality, critical organizational theory, and emerging work on algorithmic decision making. He is especially interested in the ways AI systems reorder the flow of service labor and structure opportunity. Retail and hospitality serve as his primary field sites because they reveal the meeting point between cultural expectations, emotional labor, and data driven forms of oversight.

Josh’s research program moves across three main areas. The first explores how identity forms within high pressure workplaces where employees balance institutional demands with personal meaning. The second investigates how technology guides or restricts that process through automated scheduling or performance systems. The third looks at how organizations attempt to build culture and how workers interpret those efforts in real time.

Across all projects Josh aims to understand how organizations can grow more humane and more aligned with the realities of the people who keep them running. His long term goal is to produce scholarship that links theory with practice and supports leaders who want workplaces that protect dignity, nurture learning, and promote human flourishing.








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