About

Christine Riordan is an Assistant Professor at the School of Labor and Employment Relations. Her research focuses on understanding how worker voice and job quality are affected by the changing nature and structure of work, including the rise of fissured arrangements and technological change. She employs both qualitative and quantitative methods in her research, generating original data to explore these issues. A significant part of her work examines the relationship between algorithmic management and various dimensions of job quality, such as worker well-being and work intensity, particularly in hotel housekeeping work. This research is part of a large-scale, multidisciplinary collaborative effort funded by the National Science Foundation and Russell Sage Foundation. Additionally, her projects investigate worker input into technology in education, the impact of hyper-contracting and technology on job quality in healthcare, and determinants of worker voice during the COVID-19 pandemic. She has also contributed to the development of industrial relations theory, drawing insights from organizational theory, and has published on topics related to employment relationships, inequality, immigration, and work.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Economics
• Marketing
• Business
• Computer Security
• Engineering
• Management
• Public relations
• Demographic economics
• Social psychology
• Law
• Process management
• Psychology
• Knowledge management
• Labour economics
• Medicine

Selected publications

• Building Power From the Bottom‐Up: How Union Leaders Navigate Power Relations Under Algorithmic Management

  British Journal of Industrial Relations · 2025-11-29 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT Technology and power are shaped by social context, linked to interactions and relationships among organisational actors. New technologies such as algorithmic management (AM) represent novel sources of contestation, raising questions for workers and unions. Our study examines the social processes union leaders use to navigate the transformation of rules that organise work and power relations under AM in hotel housekeeping. Drawing on everyday social processes at the workplace and applying a relational lens, we identify three interrelated strategies: (1) collective sensemaking through skill‐building and coordination of shared interests; (2) consultation and negotiation, which involve relational dimensions with management; and (3) collective action, which leaders adapt to the context of technology. These strategies modify rules to realise workers’ interests and, in some cases, coalesce into new institutional rules. We show how union leaders build power from the bottom‐up and how power resources, and worker power in the context of technological change, can be situated in everyday social processes.

  PublisherDOI

• Working Together: Algorithmic Management and Peer Relationships in the Hospitality Industry

  2025-07-04

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• The Voice Mosaic of Ethnic Workers: A Cross-Cultural Analysis

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2024-07-09

  articleSenior author

  Lately, direct employee voice has been garnering attention from HRM and OB scholars owing to its numerous benefits within organizations. However, many questions remain unexplored: How did the surge in the adoption of direct voice influence the voice participation of workers with low-status identities such as ethnic minorities in the workplace? How do organizational practices, including the adoption of indirect voice channels, and different cultural contexts predict the involvement of these communities in direct voice? To address these important inquiries, we use the European Social Survey data across 17 countries, paired with GLOBE data tracking national cultural dimensions to examine the voice behaviors of ethnic minorities and test the strategic role enacted by effective indirect voice representation in driving direct voice engagement of these marginalized communities across different culture values (e.g., power distance, institutional collectivism, and ingroup collectivism). Consistent with Social Identity Theory, our findings indicate that ethnic workers were less likely to participate in direct voice compared to their nonethnic counterparts. Additionally, while indirect voice efficacy was found to motivate the participation of ethnic minorities in direct voice in cultures high on power distance, collectivist cultures were more likely to deter them from engaging in similar behaviors. Finally, our supplementary analysis corroborates the role of nonunion representation in bolstering direct voice participation among ethnic workers.

  PublisherDOI

• Technologies and Their Stakeholders in HRM: Insights Derived From Worker-Centered Experiences

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2024-07-09

  article

  Technologies are transforming all facets of human resource management in organizations, from hiring processes to training programs to the management and structure of workflows. These changes affect not only the work and decision-making of managers and other organizational leaders, but also of employees. Employees face a wide range of impacts, from reconfigured opportunity structures in hiring, to demand for new skills sets and training, and to changed discretion and autonomy in undertaking their work. At the same time, technologies also bring new stakeholders into the fold. Developers and vendors are designing artificial intelligence applications to recruit and screen job applications, training protocols to ensure sustained use of their products, and algorithmic management applications to automate decisions regarding labor allocation and workflow. This symposium takes these two trends – the transformation of various HRM applications through technology and the addition of new stakeholders to HRM practices – as a starting point. Specifically, we focus on three processes and their technological transformations: AI-enabled recruitment and hiring; training; and algorithmic management. Empirical studies on each emphasize the experience of employees with such technologies and illustrate how the role of additional stakeholders—namely, the developers and vendors of technology—are integral to this experience. The proposed symposium thus offers a range of insights as to how various stakeholders may collaborate to derive equitably distributed value from technologies designed to improve organizations’ human resource management practices and explores challenges and limitations to doing so. From Resumes to Algorithms: Employers' Use of Algorithm-Driven Recruitment and Worker Implications Author: Xiangmin Liu; Rutgers U., New Brunswick Author: Adrienne E. Eaton; - Author: Liang Zhang; New York U. Author: Todd Vachon; Rutgers U., School of Management and Labor Relations Trained and Constrained: How Vendors Shape Technology Use during Digital Transformation Author: Jenna E. Myers; U. Of Toronto-Ind Rel Lbr Brokerage from the Bottom Up: Workplace Leaders as Algorithmic Brokers in Hotel Housekeeping Work Author: Christine A. Riordan; U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Author: Hye Jin Rho; Michigan State U. Author: Yeaseul Hur; U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Author: Patricia Tabarani; U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  PublisherDOI

• Charting the Automation of Hospitality: An Interdisciplinary Literature Review Examining the Evolution of Frontline Service work in the Face of Algorithmic Management

  Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · 2023 · 25 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Political Science
  • Knowledge management

  Recent investments in automation and AI are reshaping the hospitality sector. Driven by social and economic forces affecting service delivery, these new technologies have transformed the labor that acts as the backbone to the industry-namely frontline service work performed by housekeepers, front desk staff, line cooks and others. We describe the context for recent technological adoption, with particular emphasis on algorithmic management applications. Through this work, we identify gaps in existing literature and highlight areas in need of further research in the domains of worker-centered technology development. Our analysis highlights how technologies such as algorithmic management shape roles and tasks in the high-touch service sector. We outline how harms produced through automation are often due to a lack of attention to non-management stakeholders. We then describe an opportunity space for researchers and practitioners to elicit worker participation at all stages of technology adoption, and offer methods for centering workers, increasing transparency, and accounting for the context of use through holistic implementation and training strategies.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Designing for Wellbeing: Worker-Generated Ideas on Adapting Algorithmic Management in the Hospitality Industry

  2023 · 31 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Political Science
  • Computer Security

  Labor shortages have shaped many industries over the past several years, with hospitality experiencing one of the largest rates of attrition. Workers are leaving their jobs for a variety of reasons, ranging from burnout and work intensification to a lack of meaningful employment. While some literature maintains that labor-replacing automation is poised to bridge the shortages, we argue there is an opportunity for technology design to instead improve job quality and retention. Drawing on interviews with unionized guest room attendants, we report on workers’ perceptions of a widely-used algorithmic room assignment system. We then present worker-generated design ideas that adapt this system toward supporting three key facets of wellbeing: self-efficacy, transparency, and workload. We argue for the need to consider these facets of wellbeing through design across the service landscape, particularly as HCI attends to the impacts of AI and automation on frontline work.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Do Workers Speak Up When Feeling Job Insecure? Examining Workers’ Response to Precarity During the COVID-19 Pandemic

  Work and Occupations · 2022 · 15 citations

  • Political Science
  • Demographic economics
  • Psychology

  The COVID-19 pandemic inflicted unprecedented precarity upon workers, including concerns about job insecurity. We examine whether workers respond to job insecurity with voice, and assess the role of unions, managers, and employment arrangements in this relationship. Analyses of an original 2020 survey representative of Illinois and Michigan workers show that job insecurity is not significantly associated with voice. Further, while we find that union membership and confidence in organized labor are positively associated with voice, insecure workers are less likely to speak up than secure workers as confidence in organized labor increases. Last, we find that insecure nonstandard workers are less likely to use voice than their secure counterparts.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• From Bread and Roses to #MeToo: Multiplicity, Distance, and the Changing Dynamics of Conflict in IR Theory

  Industrial and Labor Relations Review · 2020-11-19 · 13 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  A central assumption in industrial relations theory is that conflict is rooted in an enduring difference between the interests of labor and management. In recent years, the reality of work has changed for many, and scholarship has called attention to overlooked dimensions of conflict that depart from this assumption. The authors account for these developments with the concepts of multiplicity and distance. Multiplicity means that a broad range of actors bring diverse goals, tied to identities and values in addition to interests, to the employment relationship. The competing and fluid motivations that stem from these goals alter how actors individually and collectively name conflict. Distance reflects a growing rift between those who control work and those who labor, rooted in prevailing organizational forms and practices and the transformation of institutions. Distance alters actors’ interdependence and their perceived and actual power in addressing conflict. From these observations, the authors derive propositions suggesting directions for research and theory regarding conflict and the institutions through which actors balance goals.

  PublisherDOI

• Tasks, stratification and occupational change : evidence from the legal profession

  DSpace@MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) · 2019-01-01 · 1 citations

  dissertationOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2019

  Publisher

• Restructuring in corporate law: Stratification of opportunity structures within firms

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2018-07-09

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Tasks that constitute the division of labor – the content of work itself, in other words – are increasingly recognized as a potential mechanism of stratification within organizations and occupations. In such settings, tasks are theorized to be the basis of opportunity structures related to factors such as the attainment of skill or social capital, with task characteristics such as status, complexity, and frequency shaping their distribution. Yet systematic study of tasks as a mechanism of stratification remains incomplete. How does task reorganization – a changing of the division of labor – affect the occupational opportunity structures found within firms? What are the implications for technical, social, or other professional resources and rewards and their distribution? I examine this question through a recent wave of task restructuring among corporate law firm associateships. Drawing from an interview study in the Boston and New York legal markets, I show that reorganization of tasks among lawyers shapes divergent opportunity structures related to skill, social capital, and nuanced means of professional advancement, such as opportunities to demonstrate professional expertise and autonomy, that reinforce existing patterns of stratification among lawyers. The findings add to an emerging model of task-based stratification found within scholarship on work and organizations.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Hye Jin Rho

  4 shared

• Xiangmin Liu

  Hunan University

  3 shared

• Natasha Iskander

  3 shared

• Ezra Awumey

  Carnegie Mellon University

  2 shared

• Sarah Fox

  2 shared

• Betsy Bender Stringam

  New Mexico State University

  2 shared

• Ben Begleiter

  2 shared

• Nichola Lowe

  University of Minnesota

  2 shared

Awards & honors

• Distinguished Alumni Award
• First Decade Achievement
• Special Honorees