Corporate Transformation at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany

Joseph B.  Fuller; Amy C. Edmondson; Daniela  Beyersdorfer; Tonia  Labruyere

Case | HBS Case Collection | December 2018

Corporate Transformation at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany

by Joseph B. Fuller, Amy C. Edmondson, Daniela Beyersdorfer and Tonia Labruyere

Abstract

When Stefan Oschmann became CEO and chairman of the executive board of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, in 2016, the company had started its transformation from a mid-tier traditional German industry player to a global modern science and technology player. The restructuring and portfolio overhaul led by Oschmann’s predecessor Karl-Ludwig Kley since 2007 had been approved by the Merck founding family in its 13th generation, which still owned the majority of the shares. Its intermediate results had been encouraging. After three large acquisitions (Serono, Millipore, and Sigma-Aldrich) that broadened its reach from healthcare and pharmaceuticals into life sciences and performance materials and an internal optimization program, revenues and profitability had doubled in the decade leading up to 2016. But more needed to be done. Preparing for the company’s 350-year anniversary in 2018, Oschmann had kept up the pace of change and announced further divestments and restructurings, sparking reactions from employees who expressed increasing exasperation about the new measures. In the fall of 2017 Oschmann and his executive board had to decide on the best strategic option for the company’s consumer health division. Should they divest a division that lacked scale but that with its consumer brands in pain and cold remedies was viewed as a symbol of the company’s origins? Was more change too much change in such a short time?

Keywords: Corporate governance with Family Ownership; Transformation; Change Management; Restructuring; Corporate Governance; Family Ownership;

Language: English

Format: Print

25 pages

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Citation:

Fuller, Joseph B., Amy C. Edmondson, Daniela Beyersdorfer, and Tonia Labruyere. "Corporate Transformation at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany." Harvard Business School Case 319-072, December 2018.

Case | HBS Case Collection | July 2019 (Revised May 2020)

AT&T, Retraining, and the Workforce of Tomorrow

William R. Kerr, Joseph B. Fuller and Carl Kreitzberg

By the late 2000s, rapid changes in the telecommunications industry forced AT&T’s management team to take on a task that CEO Randall Stephenson called the “biggest logistical challenge” they had ever seen: retraining 100,000 workers by 2020. In 2012, internal company analyses found that AT&T’s workforce would lack the skills it needed to fulfill emerging job requirements. AT&T responded by creating “Workforce 2020,” a company-wide initiative that sought to address potential skill shortfalls. The initiative aimed to transform AT&T’s workforce by implementing multiple changes, such as redesigning job roles, developing new educational curricula with Udacity, and incentivizing employees to retrain themselves for high-demand careers. Some gave high praise to the “Workforce 2020” model, going so far as to call it a new “social contract” between employers and employees. Others worried that the new program was systematically disadvantaging specific groups of workers. In 2018, AT&T rebranded Workforce 2020 to “Future Ready,” signaling the company’s commitment to retraining its workforce beyond 2020.

Keywords: AT＆T; workforce; skills; future of work; telecommunications; Unions; technological change; layoffs; MOOCS; Strategic Planning; Employees; Training; Competency and Skills; Labor; Learning; Labor Unions; Technology Adoption; Talent and Talent Management; Telecommunications Industry; Communications Industry; United States;

Citation:

Kerr, William R., Joseph B. Fuller, and Carl Kreitzberg. "AT&T, Retraining, and the Workforce of Tomorrow." Harvard Business School Case 820-017, July 2019. (Revised May 2020.) View Details

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The case discusses the strategy of CIAM, a French activist investment firm, involved in a case of a buy-out of minority shareholders in the telecommunications sector. Altice NV, an international telecommunications company based in the Netherlands that owned more than 77% of SFR Group shares, made a bid for the remaining shares of France’s second largest mobile operator. Believing that the offer was woefully inadequate and constituted an abuse of power, CIAM had been fighting for a better offer as one of SFR’s vocal minority shareholders with a series of action plans—leveraging legal, communications, and public relations tactics. CIAM had just received a new piece of information, divulging a potential misuse of SFR corporate assets by Altice, and was discussing next steps.

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Corporate Transformation at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany

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