A Recovery Squandered

Michael E. Porter; Jan   Rivkin; Mihir   Desai; Katherine M. Gehl; William R. Kerr; Manjari  Raman

Report | 2019

A Recovery Squandered: The State of U.S. Competitiveness 2019

by Michael E. Porter, Jan Rivkin, Mihir Desai, Katherine M. Gehl, William R. Kerr and Manjari Raman

Abstract

In this report, the authors synthesize their views on U.S. competitiveness and unveil the findings of the 2019 HBS surveys on U.S. competitiveness. Specifically, this report—built on the survey findings and eight years of prior research on the competitiveness of the United States—highlights a disturbing pattern: despite a decade of steady economic growth since the Great Recession, America has done remarkably little to address underlying structural weaknesses in the country’s economy and society. The nation has squandered the recovery.

Keywords: U.S. competitiveness; Competitive Strategy; Macroeconomics; Government and Politics; United States;

Language: English

Format: Print

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Citation:

Porter, Michael E., Jan Rivkin, Mihir Desai, Katherine M. Gehl, William R. Kerr, and Manjari Raman. "A Recovery Squandered: The State of U.S. Competitiveness 2019." Report, U.S. Competitiveness Project, Harvard Business School, December 2019.

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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A Recovery Squandered: The State of U.S. Competitiveness 2019

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