John Buchanan is the Director of the Workplace Research Centre at the Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Sydney. Prior to this he was Director of Policy Research in the Commonwealth Department of Industrial Relations. He has conducted research in the areas of micro-economic reform, local employment initiatives, performance pay, executive remuneration and the industrial relations system.

John has also worked for the trade union movement as a researcher, examining the operation of performance pay systems. He was part of the project team that undertook the first Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey (AWIRS). His primary research interest is in how organisations respond to changes in the external economic and policy environment.

In recent years John's research interests have focused on changes associated with the demise of the classical wage earner model of employment. He is especially interested in new approaches to integrating industrial relations, social and economic policies to achieve simultaneous improvements in productivity and fairness.