Publications

Robots and Work

in ILR Review (second R&R), 2025

Co-authored with Avner Ben-Ner and Ainhoa Urtasun

This paper examines the effects of robot adoption on employment and skills in US manufacturing plants (2010-2022). Using a difference-in-differences method, we find approximately 150% increase in job postings and 15% increase in employment in plants that adopt robots compared to non-adopters matched by industry and labor market. Requirements for design, maintenance and other technical skills increase for those who work with robots. Non-adopters lose employment reflecting negative spillover effect from adopters. These findings suggest increased competitiveness of robot adopters that raise output not only in the robotized stage of production but have positive spillover effects in the rest of the plant and in other plants within the same firm. Industry-level employment effects are negligible due to counterbalancing gains and losses. Our plant, firm, and industry level analyses suggest that productivity and human-robot complementarity effects dominate displacement, with job losses limited to outcompeted non-adopters.

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Sharing is Caring: Employee Stock Ownership Plans and Employee Satisfaction in U.S. Manufacturing

in ILR Review (first R&R), 2025

Co-authored with Avner Ben-Ner, Jason Sockin, and Ainhoa Urtasun

Do employees fare better in firms they partly own? Examining workers’ reviews of their employers on Glassdoor, we compare employee satisfaction between firms in which workers own company shares through an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) and conventional firms in which they do not. Focusing on workers in U.S. manufacturing, we find employees report greater satisfaction in employee-owned firms overall and with specific aspects of jobs such as firm culture. This satisfaction premium is greater when the ESOP is the product of collective bargaining or employees own a larger stake of firm equity. Employee satisfaction appears to differ by ownership arrangement.

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The Effects of Robots on the Workplace

in Academy of Management Proceedings (Best Paper), 2024

This paper examines the effects of robots across various occupations in US manufacturing plants, extending extant research conducted at the firm and industry levels. We use a difference-in-differences approach matched on industry, commuting zone, and plant size to estimate how employment and skill demand for various occupations change after robot adoption. We find that the introduction of robots is associated with 150 percent increase in the number of job postings and an increase in employment of 15 percent; the increase is larger in production jobs than in support jobs. Comparing effects across plants within adopting firms, we show that the expansion only occurs in the robotic plants, suggesting that prior firm-level studies overlooked the distinction between adopter and (majority) nonadopter plants within firms, underestimating the robotization effect. We find a negligible employment effect at the industry level as the positive effect in adopters is counterbalanced by the lost of workers in nonadopters. The majority of jobs do not change skill composition following the adoption, but the robotized part of the plant requires more design, production, maintenance, repair, and programming skills. We provide credible evidence that the productivity and robot-human complementarity effects dominate any displacement effect and that loss of employment is limited to outcompeted nonadopters.

Recommended citation: Adrianto, Adrianto, Avner Ben-Ner, and Ainhoa Urtasun. "The Effects of Robots on the Workplace." In Academy of Management Proceedings, vol. 2024, no. 1, p. 18345.
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Sharing is Caring: Employee Stock Ownership Plans and Employee Satisfaction in U.S. Manufacturing

in Academy of Management Proceedings, 2024

Do employees fare better in firms they partly own? By examining workers’ reviews of their employers on the website Glassdoor, we offer the first expansive comparison of employee satisfaction between firms in which workers own company shares through an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) and conventional firms in which they do not. Focusing on production workers and managers in an industry-labor market matched sample within U.S. manufacturing, we find that employees report greater satisfaction in employee-owned firms overall and within specific aspects of jobs such as their firms’ culture. Such differences in job quality cannot be rationalized by differences in skill demand and are greater when the ESOP is the product of collective bargaining. This work highlights how match quality can differ by ownership arrangement.

Recommended citation: Adrianto, Adrianto, Jason Sockin, Avner Ben-Ner, and Ainhoa Urtasun. "Sharing is Caring: Employee Stock Ownership Plans and Employee Satisfaction in US Manufacturing." In Academy of Management Proceedings, vol. 2024, no. 1, p. 17941.
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How Things are Made Matters: The Effects of Technology on the Organization of Work

in Academy of Management Proceedings, 2023

This paper examines the effect of production technologies, directly and indirectly through complexity and task interdependence, on outcomes important to the organization of work. Our study uses online job vacancy postings in the manufacturing sector during 2017-2021 to analyze technical occupations (i.e., engineers, technicians, and operators) in plants that implement one of six primary technologies: subtraction, forming, molding, additive manufacturing, chemical, and assembly. Controlling for different forms of automation, location, and other factors, we find that the differences in division of labor, specialization, and span of control among technologies are driven by differences in complexity. Additive manufacturing, chemical, and assembly are technologically more complex than forming, molding, and subtraction, and, as a result, they need more jobs to be designed, more tasks and skills to be bundled in a job, and fewer employees to be overseen by a manager. Moreover, each technology exhibits a distinct pattern of two forms of task interdependence—reciprocal and sequential, and therefore the effects on the three outcomes are more nuanced.

Recommended citation: Adrianto, Adrianto, Avner Ben-Ner, and Ainhoa Urtasun. "How Things are made matters: the effects of technology on the organization of work." In Academy of Management Proceedings, vol. 2023, no. 1, p. 14745.
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Uji Empirik Strategi Struktur Modal Pecking Order pada Perusahaan-Perusahaan Non Keuangan LQ45 Bursa Efek Indonesia

in Inovasi: Jurnal Ekonomi, Keuangan, dan Manajemen, 2019

In this undergraduate publication, I test the pecking order theory on blue chip stocks in the Indonesian stock market.

Recommended citation: Adrianto and Buddi Wibowo (2019) Uji Empirik Strategi Struktur Modal Pecking Order pada Perusahaan-Perusahaan Non Keuangan LQ45 Bursa Efek Indonesia. Inovasi: Jurnal Ekonomi, Keuangan, dan Manajemen, 15(1), 12-25.
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