Guenther Lomas

PhD Candidate
guenther.lomas@mail.utoronto.ca

Fields of Study

  • Human Resources Management
  • Industrial/Employment Relations
  • Labour Economics

Areas of Interest

  • Industrial/Employment Relations
  • Human Resource Management
  • Economics of Management
  • HR Analytics
  • Machine Learning for Business & Social Sciences

Working Dissertation

Title

Why Do Some Firms Adopt High Performance Work Systems and Others Do Not?

Supervisors

Loren Brandt (supervisor)
Rafael Gomez
Morley Gunderson

Biography

I am a PhD candidate at the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources at the University of Toronto with research interests in international strategic human resource management, economics of management, labour economics and applied statistical methods for the social sciences. My research projects include empirical work on the role of workplace consultative committees, unions and high-involvement work systems in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. I also study the impact of management practices on workplace outcomes at companies in mainland China using the China Employer-Employee Survey (CEES). I am currently working on integrating newly developed AI / machine learning tools with traditional social science empirical methods. In particular, my current projects use multi-lingual natural language processing for dealing with unstructured economic text data from different countries.

Publications

Education

PhD in Industrial Relations and Human Resources (in progress), University of Toronto
MA in Economics, University of Toronto
BA in Economics, University of British Columbia

Presentations

“Why Do Some Firms Adopt High Performance Work Systems and Others Do Not? Evidence from the China Employer-Employee Survey”, 6th China Research Workshop, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto (February 2019)
“The Good Workplace. Overall Job Satisfaction and Employee Involvement: Evidence from Four Anglo-American Economies”, 22nd Colloquium on Personnel Economics (COPE), University of Augsburg (March 2019)
“Why Do Some Firms Adopt High Performance Work System and Others Do Not? The Case of China and its Dynamic Business Environment”, HRM Issues in China Symposium, Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA) 71st Annual Meeting, Cleveland (June 2019)
“Do Major Disruptions at the Workplace Affect the Adoption of High-Performance Work Practices?”, IR Dimensions of High-Performance Work Systems: New International Evidence Symposium, Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA) 71st Annual Meeting,

Administrative Service

Canadian Industrial Relations Association (CIRA) Annual Conference 2018 – PhD Consortium, organizing committee member
Academy of Management (AOM) 2018 Annual Meeting Reviewer
Canadian Industrial Relations Association (CIRA), member
Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA), member

Cohort

  • 2014 entry