Shinan Wang

PhD Candidate · Management & Organizations & Sociology
Kellogg School of Management · Northwestern University

I study what makes human capital valuable, and whom firms hire, promote, and invest in as that value changes. My research examines how technology and social context reshape the value of human capital.

In my job market paper, I show that major new technologies can reset career hierarchies. Workers whose expertise was built under the prior regime lose ground, while less experienced workers who move early into the new technology gain access to frontier work. I call this a mobility window: a temporary period in which frontier opportunities open beyond established hierarchies before a new one forms. I find this pattern in firms’ adoption of AI today and across technological waves over the past half century.

My broader research studies how technological change reshapes the expertise firms need and the bar they set for new hires; how social capital, family ties, and national identity shape how firms evaluate and organize talent; and how these forces intersect when social networks shape which technologies firms pursue and where they build expertise for innovation.

My work combines large-scale data and computational methods with historical archives, online experiments, and qualitative interviews. My research has been published in Administrative Science Quarterly and PNAS.

I am on the 2026–2027 academic job market.