TOM KOCHAN: Well, good afternoon, everyone,
or good morning or good evening.
No matter where you are in the world,
it's some time of the day or night.
And I'm delighted that we can use this time now
to provide a wrap-up to the journey
that we've been on for the last seven weeks.
We've covered a lot of ground.
We've looked at a lot of different issues
that are so central to our future, to the future of work.
And today, what we want to do is to try to take stock.
What did we learn?
Where are we going?
How are we going to individually and then collectively make
this a better workplace for the future for all concerned?
So I'm really pleased that we can have this session in a very
interactive way.
And as we indicated on the course materials,
you can post questions or comments as we go along.
Some of you, I know, are already on Twitter.
There's the hashtag, and I believe
that's going to continue to show for you, those of you who
are comfortable using Twitter.
And one of our colleagues here in the classroom
will convey your questions or comments.
You can also post on the discussion board
where we put a heading for the live discussion.
So let's make this really an interactive session.
I'm joined here this afternoon by our MBA
class that has been working with us throughout the semester.
As you know, many of them served as expert facilitators for you.
So now they all have a certificate
in mediation and facilitation.
They're experienced, and they're going
to go out and start doing this in the workplace of the future.
But we'll take questions and comments from our colleagues
here because they've been following and working
on the same issues as we've been going through this course.
So why don't we get started?
And let's see a little bit first, who are we?
Well, I want to thank our partners.
This enterprise is only possible because we
have a lot of good organizations that are working together
to make it possible, starting with edX and MITx,
our platform and our delivery source,
and the team of people working behind the scenes
to do the videos with me and with our colleagues
and to do the editing and to put the materials on the course
site, all part of this process.
I'm very pleased that we have partners
at both Cornell University and the School of Labor
and Industrial Relations and at Rutgers University
and the School of Management and Labor Relations,
where classes have taken the course on their own campus.
And in fact, we're going to draw on some of the material that
were provided by students from those classes
as we move along here this afternoon.
And then, finally, our colleagues
at the Hitachi Foundation.
You saw one video that Barbara Dyer helped
to produce on entrepreneurship.
Well, the Hitachi Foundation is a partner with us
throughout this course in providing materials and support
as we go along.
So with the MIT School of Management,
with our Institute for Work and Employment Research,
we have lots of organizations supporting this enterprise.
And then, who are we?
Well, we are at 4,299 students and counting.
That number went up this morning,
so I suspect it may continue to grow as we go along
and as we keep this material live on the course site.
But it's a very, very diverse class,
and that's what makes it really interesting--
144 countries.
We have people-- a wide distribution
of educational backgrounds, from high school, some students
in high school, students graduated
from high school in technical and vocational schools,
many who have gotten four-year degrees,
and a large number with advanced degrees.
So it's a group that reflects the notion that education
is important, a theme that we beat over the head very hard
throughout the course and we'll continue to talk
about here this afternoon.
Also, a very interesting age distribution.
The median age is 31.
But if you look at this distribution,
you see that there are many younger people
and then a spattering of people more senior to age 31,
all the way up to someone in their 90s.
So welcome to our senior citizens
who are still interested in shaping the future of work.
I think that's fantastic.
So gender-- we have majority of males but a good distribution.
We have distribution also in terms
of backgrounds in industries.
I don't put it on the slides here,
but we have people with experience
in all different industries and occupations.
We have people who are union members
or have been union members, about 18% or 19%.
That's a larger number than you find in the United States
in the distribution of the population.
But then around the world it's more
reflective of the workforce as we find it,
and people of all different occupational levels,
from entry level to PhDs and advanced professionals,
people working in the gig economy,
and people working in more standard settings.
So we learned a lot from each other.
And let's take a look at what some of the overriding lessons
are.
I put three lessons here that reflect
really the motivation for this course
and that were emphasized throughout.
And I'll only use these to introduce
where we're going to go.
But basically you put a lot of emphasis
on this "high road/low road" distinction,
as we did in teaching this material,
that we know that there are choices that companies can make
to create good organizations that are financially
successful, and that if they follow
a set of well-defined practices, that can also
be good for their employees.
But not all firms compete that way.
Not all firms are organized that way.
And so we emphasized and you emphasized the importance
of trying to encourage more "High Road"
firms as a key takeaway lesson from this course.
We also emphasize something that many found surprising,
the notion that we need to rebuild worker bargaining
power, particularly here in the United States,
but increasingly across the world.
And some of you reminded us in the discussion forum
as late as this afternoon that, in some parts of the world,
workers don't have a legal right to organize,
or a legal right to voice their concerns,
or that their efforts are suppressed
in a variety of ways.
And so we have to respect workers for their rights,
for the dignity of work, and the opportunity for expressing
their concerns with power and with effectiveness
so that they can contribute both to their own improvements
but also to the viability of their enterprises.
And then finally, this emphasis on trying to get business,
and labor, education, and government working together.
We particularly feel it here in the United States
at the moment, with the rhetoric, the unfortunate
rhetoric, and my personal view that is so active
and maybe even dominating our political campaign
at the moment, with people not respecting each other's rights,
each other's backgrounds, each other's traditions,
and each other's preferences.
And I think we've got to find ways
to get across these interest group
lines to solve some of these problems.
So that's a bit of an overview of what we've covered
and some of the major themes.
Now let's dig a little bit deeper.
And let's start with, what do you want from work?
Remember, we started with a question right
at the beginning of the class.
What's the most important priority for you
when you think about what you're looking for in your work
and in your careers?
And the results are quite interesting,
and I think they're more nuanced than even this pie chart shows.
Yes, number one is getting a good balance
between work and family life.
26% of you rated that your top priority,
followed very closely by this interesting concern
for having an impact, for dealing
with real problems, significant problems, in your society
and your location, your community.
You want to address the issues that are in front of us today.
Maybe it's dealing with climate change
and saving the planet for yourselves
and the next generation, other generations to follow.
Maybe it's dealing with the poverty
that we find in too many parts of our world.
Maybe it's dealing with some of the social challenges
and conflicts that we have in the war-torn areas
of the world.
But you want to make a difference,
and I think that is fantastic.
And yes, you want a good financial return
for your investments and your contributions.
But notice, these are mixed together.
And I think when we did the interviews, when
we did the exercise around asking, how
are your views similar or different than your parents,
the dominant thing that came through
in your qualitative comments, to me,
was that you want many of the same things as your parents--
respect, security in some sense, financial security.
But you also want more.
You recognize you are perhaps more
privileged than your parents or grandparents
and that you are in a position where
you can have an opportunity to have a meaningful job,
make a meaningful contribution, and really contribute
to improving society.
And so I think there's more that you expect out of work
than perhaps prior generations.
Here is just a couple of examples.
And I want to put a little bit more substance on that pie
chart, because I think it tells us something
about the complexities of work today
and of the workforce today.
And this is one point that someone made,
and I think it summarizes that chart pretty nicely.
"I dream of a well-balanced work and family environment, where
I can develop my skills and put them
to service of my community, as well as
to get a wage that allows me to live decently and provide
for my future offspring."
So here we bring family and work together.
We bring commitment to an important cause,
but an expectation that I can do this in a way that will
take care of my family needs.
Our MBA students here in the classroom
had an assignment to go out and talk to other workers,
to interview them and do an audio recording.
And we received some fantastic recordings and stories
from workers telling their own story about work.
And I just want to illustrate two of them
that I think help bring home the complexity and the diversity
that we find in work experiences and in our workforce today.
This one says-- it's an immigrant from Ghana working
in a temporary job in transportation and construction
and manufacturing services and has had a variety
of these kinds of jobs.
And what is his aspiration?
It's very basic and very simple for an immigrant.
He wants to finish school.
He wants to get a better job.
He wants to start a family.
And he wants to live comfortably.
That's the immigrant story that builds so many countries
around the world, where people take the risks of moving
from their homeland to somewhere else in search of a better
life.
And it's our responsibility, therefore,
to make sure that people who have that aspiration
can actually realize it.
And we appreciate the value that they bring to our countries
when they come.
And I thought that was a very interesting comment.
And this is one.
This might be one of my most favorite ones.
It's from a 26-year-old college graduate
who is an Uber driver at the moment.
And just I'll read this because it illustrates the complexity
of what's going on in this individual's mind
and in his life in trying to figure out where to go next.
And he's saying, what am I looking for in the next job?
Well, I'm "looking for a well-paying job--
over $15 an hour."
Whether we consider that well paid or not
is another question, but that's what his aspiration
is at the moment.
"Salary is definitely there, but number one is the environment--
as long as I enjoy what I'm doing--
be able to live your life and enjoy what you are doing.
But now I'm finding that it's really hard to live off
one job; I see lots of people having to work two jobs.
For me, it's just to be able to support yourself
and your family with one job."
Seems to me that's a very, very basic simple aspiration,
that if we can't deliver on that particular expectation,
there's something wrong with our work systems.
There's something wrong with our economy.
And there's something wrong with the way in which we
are structuring work today.
If we can't really provide an opportunity
to support yourself and your family with one job,
we've got a lot more work to do.
These were just a couple of the interviews
that came from our MBAs.
But I want to turn to the people in the classroom and ask them.
Just very quickly, just give a quick one minute or a one
sentence or two summary.
What surprised you when you talked to workers?
Because I encouraged the students
to go out and not just talk to someone
who was very much like them, but to talk to people [INAUDIBLE]
from a little background [INAUDIBLE] occupation.
So just very quickly, let's just get some statements
about what surprised you.
Leo's going to start us off.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
I think for me it's reading this and comparing
to what I had in my interview.
I actually interviewed someone who
worked at management consulting, which
is very high-prestige profession, very well-paid.
And the thing they complained was
balance between work and personal life,
working 100 hours a week and having to--
they wanted to quit just to have more time
to spend doing the things they liked
and being with their families.
So both on the top and the bottom,
people are feeling the same need of, like, maybe they're
overworking and, like, too much pressure on them.
TOM KOCHAN: Yeah.
So here's this concern of, I'm always
on the road or [INAUDIBLE].
What else did you hear?
AUDIENCE: So with the first citation we had up there--
I was interviewing a French retail worker.
And it was interesting to hear how that worker didn't want
to use their nationality, which could easily
be associated with luxury products,
as their selling point.
So they were trying to kind of break out of it,
and they recognized the value.
But just interesting to hear how different
backgrounds and nationalities can
influence how you approach work, how you succeed at work,
and how you want to be identified at work.
TOM KOCHAN: Yeah.
So here is someone [INAUDIBLE].
And the fact that this person was a wine salesman, well,
we tend to think, French wine, my goodness.
But he wanted to demonstrate that he knew wine
not because he was French and didn't
want to use that as a marketing device.
He wanted to demonstrate he really loves this cuisine.
He loves to do it.
He loves to sell it.
And he wants to have an impact.
What else?
Yeah, [? Cueto. ?] Go ahead.
We lost the-- here we are.
Go ahead.
AUDIENCE: I interviewed someone who
works with the state of Massachusetts
on the theme of work balance.
He said something interesting, that even
though a lot of times people think working in government
doesn't pay well, the work balance actually
comes into effect because you're not
allowed to check your emails when you go home.
So in the private sector, you may
get a cell phone and laptops and all
that, but somehow you're expected to be on 24/7.
TOM KOCHAN: Yeah.
So this technology can either be our ally or our worst enemy,
and they have a solution or a strategy for dealing with it.
So that was very interesting.
Good.
[? Ladia. ?]
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
I interviewed a immigrant worker.
She was a woman from Bangladesh working for last 10 years
in the US.
And that surprised me when I asked, what is your wish?
She said that, I want that I could
save that amount of money, that I
can afford a two-bedroom house, and I
can keep my child with myself.
And she was already doing two jobs.
And that made me think that the price of the housing
is so high, and a person who is working full time, and even
for the extra time-- she was doing
two jobs-- it's difficult for her
to maintain family life and [INAUDIBLE] work.
TOM KOCHAN: Yeah.
So here's someone who has a family, set
of responsibilities, holding down two jobs,
just trying to survive and get ahead,
another immigrant story that is very common for people
who are trying to make it here.
Anyone else want to offer?
Yes.
AUDIENCE: For me, my interviewee is a PhD student in the UAE.
And he has [INAUDIBLE] for 12 years.
And what surprised me is that, I'll also mention to you,
is that the labor union in the UAE or the Arabic area,
most of the countries, is illegal, which
is my first time to know that.
And previously, I already heard the news
that the immigrant laborers, like from Pakistan,
from India, they got very low payment,
like it's about $200 US per month probably, or even less.
But before that, I had no idea that there was no protection
of these laborers.
And generally, their visa is linked
to the employer, which means the employer can easily
misuse their right to force them to work hard.
TOM KOCHAN: Yes.
This is a big, big issue for immigrants in many countries,
particularly in the Middle East.
I've spent some time in Saudi Arabia trying
to work with the Minister of Labor in Saudi Arabia
to change those, and it's very difficult.
But here is a country where worker rights
are very much suppressed.
And particularly the vast majority
of the workforce in the private sector
are immigrants from very low-income countries,
and they're tied to their employer.
So when we think about the workplace today
and we think about our aspirations,
we generally tend to think about the fact
that we have a free labor market.
We can move if things are not satisfactory,
or we can raise our voice, individually or collectively,
to try to change things.
But we have to understand that a very large number of people
across the globe don't have those very, very basic rights
or what the International Labor Organization-- remember
Guy Ryder's introduction to this course way back
in the first week, the director-general
of the ILO in Geneva.
A core principle, a core human right,
according to the International Labor Organization,
a part of the UN, is freedom of association,
along with freedom from discrimination and from forced
labor and child labor.
So those are some very, very basic things
that we expect in the world of work.
But not all people and, in fact, a very significant portion
of the workforce across the globe
don't have these basic rights.
So we have to remember this as we think about where we are
and how we advance from the stage that we're at.
[? Shahid, ?] do you have a--
AUDIENCE: There was a question on Twitter
where someone asked, do you have an example of [INAUDIBLE]
country which is sort of facilitating some of that,
making sure that some of these [INAUDIBLE] sort of things
are not imposed on the people, on the workers?
Do you have some good examples [INAUDIBLE]?
TOM KOCHAN: Well, there are examples
of countries that are struggling with this and working on it.
One middle-income country that is actually quite advanced
is Singapore.
And Singapore has a lot of immigrant workers,
particularly in the domestic service sector,
and they've had some scandals, some terrible experiences.
But they have now imposed some very strong legal constraints
and strong enforcement.
Because it's one thing to have a law,
but it's another thing to try to enforce it.
And so Singapore is working to make progress
in this direction.
But I have to say, in the Middle East
some countries are doing a better job,
but there is a long, long way to go.
And that's where perhaps the issue
is most serious and most profound
because the benefits to migrant--
immigrant workers going from Pakistan or Bangladesh
to the Middle East are quite substantial if they
can stand the harsh conditions of the work.
And the employers in the Middle East
understand that there are real advantages for people coming
to take that work, and so therefore
that just feeds into some of the more harsh rules.
I think we will see change.
Those of you who have been reading the world news
have just heard that Saudi Arabia
is trying to move away from some of its dependence on the oil
industry.
Saudi Arabia has also tried to introduce, slowly,
with the leadership of their Minister of Labor
a number of years ago, more rights for women,
because women don't have many rights to drive a car
or to work in settings where men are present.
That is slowly changing.
That's going to take a long time.
But here, again, is an example of a society that
has a set of values, historical values, that
are very important to their identity and their religion.
But as outsiders, we may have some questions about them.
We have to understand these countries
in their own cultural context.
But I do believe there are some very basic core rights of work
that have to be respected regardless of where people
work, how they work, who they are, and who they work.
So I think this is a campaign.
It's something that we can continue to work for.
So thank you for that question, whoever posted it on Twitter.
OK.
Let's move on.
This is a good start.
We have an understanding, a deeper understanding,
of what we are looking from work and now a really
good discussion of what people around the world
are experiencing as they try to improve their situation.
We paid special attention to history in this class.
And I want to thank one of the participants in the class
for posting this great quote from Thomas Jefferson, one
of our most famous presidents, the third president
of the United States and one of the authors
of the Declaration of Independence for the United
States.
So Jefferson said that, "History by appraising them of the past
will enable them"-- that is all of us--
--"to be a judge of the future; it will avail us to learn from
the experience of other times and other nations;
it will qualify us as judges of the actions and designs
of men"-- that's a very time-honored or an unhonorable
use of the word "men" but that's the way he wrote--
and "it will enable us to know the ambitions of others
even under every disguise it may not assume; and knowing it,
to defeat its views."
Thomas Jefferson was a student of history.
Thomas Jefferson respected history.
We respect history in this class.
Not to repeat it, not to try to go back to the way things were,
but to learn from it so that we can lay
a foundation for the future.
So we spent time here in the United States
talking about this foundation that
was laid in the 1930s called the New Deal.
And we even celebrated some of the people
who helped to bring about it--
a professor from the University of Wisconsin
whose ideas led to unemployment insurance
and led to Social Security and led
to the passage of child labor and minimum wage
legislation in that state and in other states before we
got national legislation.
And to Frances Perkins, the first woman
who was a member of a president's cabinet.
President Roosevelt asked her to be the Secretary of State.
And Frances Perkins said to the president when he asked her,
are you sure you really want me?
Because if you are going to put me in that office,
I'm going to bring my experience to bring about Social Security,
some minimum wage, some basic rights of unemployment
insurance to bear at a national level.
Frances Perkins observed firsthand
the terror of a factory fire called the Triangle Shirtwaist
fire in New York City in the earlier part of the century,
where over 100 women died because the fire escapes were
locked as the fire burned in that particular factory.
And that imprinted her commitment
to make a better place for work, a more safe place to work.
And as a result of leadership and ideas
and commitment and a change in politics in the 1930s,
we got the foundation of the Social Security,
the Retirement Security Act basically, the unemployment
insurance for the first time, the ability to join a union
and engage in collective bargaining protected
for the first time, and a minimum wage and overtime
rules for the first time.
That foundation in the United States
and comparable legislation in other countries,
many in Europe before us, some in Asia after us,
some still struggling to put these kinds
of basic foundations and floors on their conditions of work.
But it was that foundation that allowed us to then build
what we talked about in several sessions as the social contract
here in the United States and in other places.
And so the question then is, can we build on this?
Yes, this worked for many years, and we'll
look at that in just a moment just to refresh our minds.
But can we build a new foundation?
If today's world has changed as dramatically as we
have discussed it throughout this course,
then it behooves us to ask, what's the new foundation?
What's the new body of legislation
that would lay the framework for us
to advance and to deal with some of the issues we're
going to talk about here in just a few minutes?
So let's-- [? Adelie, ?] did you have a question or comment?
AUDIENCE: Yes.
Just a comment that, like, [INAUDIBLE]
specifically said that, in this country,
any business who is depending on its existence
by paying less than the living wage
should not have the right to be in the US.
And he said that, by the living wage,
I don't mean just above existence,
like just [INAUDIBLE].
But I mean that it should be a living [INAUDIBLE]
the decent wage.
So I mean, perhaps in this course,
that's what we are trying to stress,
that there should be a decent living for the workers also.
TOM KOCHAN: Yeah.
No, absolutely.
He was a strong advocate for worker rights,
for urging business to provide a living wage
to get us out of the Great Depression of the 1930s.
And it was that kind of strong national leadership
that helped to make this possible.
So let's look at what happened.
We've talked about the social contract.
And if you look at this chart, which we used at several points
in the course, it shows, as you've
seen before, that from the end of World War II up
through the 1970s till about 1980,
wages and productivity moved together in tandem.
That is, as the economy got stronger,
the institutions of collective bargaining,
the leadership of personnel management and human resource
managers in our large corporations,
made sure that wages were moving up in tandem with productivity.
So workers shared, by and large, in the benefits
of the economic growth.
But something happened, as we all know,
in the late '70s and the early 1980s
to break this relationship.
And that's when you see wages flatlining and productivity
continuing to grow.
And that, my friends, I think explains
a lot of the frustrations that we are seeing here
in the United States play out in our political debates today.
That workers today are saying, we have not shared
or we have been displaced, and our income,
which came from good jobs, maybe manufacturing jobs
which have gone offshore or been outsourced domestically,
or whatever happened to them, changed by technology,
have not benefited from a lot of these changes.
And so we are now reaping the costs
of not addressing these changes in the economy
so that people could keep up with this process.
And so one of the things that we did in the course
is we asked all of you, what do you think about this?
Do you believe wages and productivity
should go together?
And the vast majority, over 80% of you, said yes.
But you're worried about it.
You're also realistic.
You know that the world has changed.
You know that globalization is more dominant now.
You know that technology has eliminated
a lot of routine jobs, as we covered
in later sections of the class, and you've seen it
in your own communities.
We know that we're creating new forms of work that don't always
provide some of the same supports and benefits.
And so while you know that you would like to see this happen--
and these comments come, again, off the discussion board--
you're all worried about how can we make this happen.
And I think the one on the left really
captures the sentiment of the class
as well as any that I saw on the discussion board.
And it says, "I think it's important to maintain
the productivity increases aligned with raising wages.
If we, as a society, continue to show only
huge social and economic inequalities,
and that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer,
then we will not be able to have a successful and sustainable
society."
That's a powerful statement.
And if people really feel that way, then
eventually they are going to act to change this.
And it's our job to turn some of this anger and frustration
into positive actions for dealing
with this gap between economic progress
for some but a lot of people left behind.
So how do we do it?
We have to go beyond just hoping that it changes
or wishing that it changes or worrying
that we can't change it.
And we have to start to address some
of the core causes of the change.
And we spent some time talking about, is this inevitable?
And we started with the corporation.
What is the corporation for?
Is the corporation simply an instrument
to maximize shareholder value?
Is the corporation expected to be
held accountable for additional interests in society,
for employees, for their communities?
Well, we heard from one of the most respected former CEOs
and business leaders in the United States,
in fact, globally, of the last generation--
John Reed, president and CEO of Citicorp,
then went on to be president of the New York Stock Exchange.
And that interview that I did with John, which
I did a year ago, I think that interview
has been replayed by more business schools than anything
else from this course.
Because here's someone who is so highly
respected and has lived through the transition.
And John Reed's view reflected the views of most people
in the online course.
And he basically said, look, a corporation, yes,
has to achieve profits and shareholder value.
That's beyond question.
But we also have to worry about the customers.
We have to worry about the employees.
And if we don't do that, then, in the long run,
organizations are going to face such a backlash.
And we're not going to prepare the labor force for the future,
because corporations are also training engines.
And he's very worried about the workforce and the training.
That's why he was so active in education,
both here at MIT as an officer of our corporation
but also I know in his private work
around the country and indeed around the globe,
and trying to advance particularly
technical education, advance science, technology,
engineering, and math education in our universities
and in our high schools.
So here is the challenge.
If we recognize-- and most of you said,
we expect corporations to behave in ways
that respond to shareholders and other stakeholders.
What do we do?
That's nice rhetoric.
But if all we do is complain about it
or go out on the streets and hold up a sign or a picket
sign, I suppose that's a statement,
but that's not going to get the job done.
So we spent a lot of time talking about what to do,
and we used lots of examples.
And here's just a few, and you all
heard about these throughout the course,
as Costco compared to Walmart.
Costco, a retailer that does invest in its employees, that
does go the high road, as we call it,
that says we're going to invest in our employees.
We're going to make them more productive
than our competitors.
And by making them more productive,
we can afford to pay them a higher wage.
This is not charity.
This is the way we're going to do business.
This is the way we're going to meet our customer needs.
And it's been very successful in doing so financially.
And it provides a high level of customer service,
and it has a loyal customer base and also provides good jobs.
And we compared that with Walmart.
Walmart is worldwide, one of the largest private employers
in the world perhaps, certainly here in North America
it is and in many of the countries represented
in this course.
And Walmart does a lot of very good things
for the environment.
Walmart was one of the first corporations
to respond when we had this terrible Hurricane
Katrina in New Orleans in 2005.
And it sent, before anybody asked it to do it,
trucks of water and support and food
to help the victims of that hurricane.
So Walmart does a lot of good things.
But Walmart also competes on the basis of just low prices
and low wages and keeping unions out and in controlling
the workforce in ways that creates
high levels of turnover, not such good customer satisfaction
and service, but low prices.
And so here we have the two comparisons
that allow us to say, which one do we prefer?
Could Walmart improve its organization
and its performance on the employment side the same way
it has demonstrated it can do on the environmental side
or on the operations side, where it
is as good as any company in the world?
If it did, perhaps we could have a high road retail industry.
But it holds everybody else down in the retail industry.
We used another example in retail, a local one
here in the Boston and New England region, one
that our colleague Zeynep Ton did a very good video on,
called Market Basket.
And this has now become kind of an icon
for a high road retail firm, a firm
where the employees, the high-level executives,
the store managers, the clerks, the truck drivers,
the warehouse workers did an unprecedented thing,
something I've never seen in all the years I've
been working in this field.
I never saw a coalition like that come together to say,
we are going to stand up for a high road
company and a high road CEO who was being fired by the board
so that they can extract more money
for the owners of the company.
And for six weeks, they rallied the employees.
They basically stopped the business from functioning.
They had the loyal support of their customers,
because their customers knew what was at stake for them.
Because here's a company that has
very low prices but great customer
service, great community involvement in stores
all over New England, family relationships,
that people know each other when they shop
and they know the employees.
The employees wear their tenure in a little badge
on their shirt.
And this was all going to go away.
And you saw how the community, how
the media, how the employees came together
to fight for good jobs and a good company.
And in the end, the board of directors
relented, and they reinstated the CEO.
And that company now is not only successful financially,
it's expanded.
The prices have remained low relative to their competitors.
And in fact, if you want to go and see a movie this weekend,
they're going to premier a documentary here
in a local theater in Somerville, which
is just near us here off the MIT campus.
It's called Food Fight, but it basically
tells the story of the people who
were involved in that dispute.
It's a very powerful, powerful movie.
I've seen it.
I don't get any royalties on it, so this
isn't a commercial for it.
But it really is the best documentary
of people who have put their lives
and their jobs on the line for something
they really believed in, and it worked out
in a good way for them.
But there are other examples.
Southwest Airlines we've used, Kaiser Permanente,
highly unionized.
Southwest is highly unionized.
Labor management partnerships, where they are working together
to improve health care.
We know that the bundle of practices
that are necessary to make this work
move from good operations strategy--
that is, you really need to manage your inventory.
You need to manage your operations.
You have to have good efficient practices
if you're a manufacturer or if you're a service provider.
And that has to be matched with effective use of technologies,
but also training of the workforce,
of respecting the workforce, for asking
the workforce for their engagement and their ideas
on how to improve operations over time, for including
the concerns for work and family and finding that balance that
makes the most sense for the nature of the organization.
It means that you have to have a business strategy that
supports innovation and good customer service
and values those kinds of features
as a way of doing business.
The way Southwest does it, they turn those planes
around more quickly than anyone else
when a plane lands, from the time
it lands to the time it takes off, because people are working
together in teams in very flexible ways
and solving problems for each other
and meeting customers' needs.
And so that's the way in which we
know one can build a company that works financially
for the share owners and the investors
and also works for customers and can work for employees.
But it takes a lot of hard work.
And so one of the questions we always have
is, well, why is it--
why is it that it's so hard to see that?
And is the privates--
or the public corporation the only way to do it?
Some companies, some organizations,
are turning to different organizational forms
to make this happen.
And this is just a sampling, and we
talked about these throughout the class at various points
as well.
Many of you know about Patagonia, this clothing maker.
And in fact, Patagonia--
I'll tell you a story that's going on right now
here in one of our communities northwest of here
called Lawrence, Massachusetts, an old textile industry
town that is very highly populated by immigrants now,
Latinos largely and people from various parts of Latin
and South America.
And there was a plant there that was privately owned.
It was called Malden Mills.
And in the 1990s-- and it was owned by a fellow
by the name of Aaron Feuerstein, who
had a very good relationship with the workers,
with the community, with the union in that plant,
providing decent jobs.
And they had a terrible fire.
And I think it was 1995 or 1997, the plant burned down.
And Aaron Feuerstein said, we're going to rebuild it.
And by God, while we're rebuilding it,
I'm going to make sure that the employees still get paid.
And this made national news.
And he did it not for the publicity.
He did it because he wanted to hold onto that workforce.
And he was committed to it, and he
knew that that workforce had made
his family very prosperous.
And they rebuilt the plant, made it more modern,
has succeeded over time.
When Feuerstein retired, it then got bought by a private equity
firm.
That private equity firm now wants
to close it down and move it to another part of the country
or move it offshore.
And so the employees and their union
have turned to Patagonia, because they make Polartec,
and Patagonia is a big purchaser of Polartec,
and said to Patagonia, why don't you buy this plant?
Why don't you buy this business and keep
us going in a viable way?
So here's another case where some choices about how do we
sustain decent quality employment
with a very good business, with a very good product,
that is serving lots of customers
in very innovative ways and in various kinds
of sport clothing.
Can we find a way to sustain that business?
I don't know what the answer will be.
But it's playing out quietly at the moment
about 40 miles from here, from the MIT campus.
We have other examples--
Mondragon.
It's a Spanish co-operative that built over time
to become a major industrial enterprise
in that part of the world and, in fact,
has operations around the world, including
here in the United States.
Employee-owned companies.
We used a couple of different brewery examples.
And this one happens to be a local one--
Harpoon.
I put it up there because I tend to like their beer,
and I like the fact that they are also employee-owned.
But it's a fine organization.
Again, this is not a commercial for their beer.
But if you ever have the opportunity,
I wouldn't discourage you from trying it.
It's well-made.
And then my favorite example--
people here a little sick of hearing it--
about my Green Bay Packer football team.
But here's a little town, Green Bay, Wisconsin,
that supports a football team because the football
team is owned by the community.
There's no way that that football team would have lasted
from 1927, when they were first formed, and stayed
in Green Bay up until today and will stay there forever,
because the community owns it, and it can't be sold.
It can't be sold to some investor who
wants to have a hobby because he or she's made their fortunes,
and therefore they just want a football team.
This is something that builds community
and the loyalty to that organization
and to that football team, carries on
even for those of us who have moved away for many years.
So we can build these organizations.
We can use different kind of governance models,
we can use different kinds of business strategies,
but we have to respect the need to respect
the rights of employees, respect the need to manage in a way
that makes the organization successful, as well
as responsive to employee concerns.
And so you have strong views.
Just as you had strong views about the corporation,
there was a lively debate on the discussion
board about these high road firms and low road firms.
And you recognize, this quote recognizes,
that some firms have a natural affinity to being a high road
firm, because it's consistent with their business strategy.
That is, they say here that if you
want to compete on the basis of innovation,
and that's part of the core business strategy,
then you're more likely to be a high road firm.
But what about firms that don't have that business strategy?
How are we going to get them to do it,
and how are we going to get more firms to compete on this basis?
Well, that's the big question.
The answer that comes here is it's only
going to come if there's pressure from employees.
If employees themselves start to raise their voices,
and how to do this.
So I would ask you, I would ask the people in this room,
if you were to move forward and try
to move us to see high road firms spread
more rapidly and more broadly cross our industries,
so that more people in our economy
could benefit from these strategies, what
needs to be done?
And if you have ideas online, put them on the discussion
board, send us your comments on Twitter, but this, to me,
is the most challenging question.
As you think about your answer, some of you
recall that two weeks ago, we were fortunate enough
to have the Secretary of Labor, Tom Perez,
come and speak to our MIT Sloan School MBAs,
and he posed that question.
And he challenged the future leaders in the MBA
and in the Sloan community to manage in the ways
that we're talking about here.
But privately, as we talked about it,
he too, asked me and others, what can we do?
What can we do to spread these kinds of practices more widely?
And so I'm asking you.
Leo?
AUDIENCE: I think there's one thing that [INAUDIBLE]
additional policies.
Some policies are necessary, by just worker voice and stronger
unions, but also, even higher minimum wage.
If minimum wage is higher, and [INAUDIBLE] salaries would
be higher, that put pressure on the companies
to train their workers and have more productive workers.
Because if you're going to have--
you're going to be forced to pay a better salary,
you're going to try to extract that value that you
obtaining, the only way you can do is by training them more.
TOM KOCHAN: OK.
AUDIENCE: And having them like--
being better.
And you're also giving workers protection
from being laid off so easily, so
that also commits the company a little bit more
to their workers.
So in that sense, you can create maybe a more--
TOM KOCHAN: Yeah.
So Leo is reflecting a view that many people hold,
that we got to bring up the floor of the low road,
and we've got a higher minimum wage, stronger
enforcement of other Labor Standards perhaps,
that's going to create some incentives.
You know, Wal-Mart did raise its wages by $1 an hour
above the minimum wage in response to employee pressure.
Now what that requires McDonald's to get
the return on that increased wage,
is they've got to start to train people.
They've got to hold on to their employees
more, for a longer period of time.
Whether they will do that or not, I don't know.
But absolutely it sets in motion some of the dynamics that
create a stronger incentive.
Greg?
AUDIENCE: This is going back to stuff
we talked about in the beginning of the semester,
but I think getting the right investors on board, if you--
TOM KOCHAN: Uh huh.
AUDIENCE: --need investors is critical.
TOM KOCHAN: Good.
AUDIENCE: And I think that a lot of the [INAUDIBLE]
at MIT where people talk about making sure
if you're an early stage [INAUDIBLE]
get investors that are aligned what you want.
I think too often, we see investors
that push companies to try scale really quickly--
TOM KOCHAN: Yep.
AUDIENCE: --and a lot of that necessitates sacrifices
that this quote kind of talks about, but I don't think you
have that motivation, unless you have
someone else who kind of can give you that pressure
and try to force you to take it.
TOM KOCHAN: So picking your investors is really important.
And in one of the videos that we did
for the course, Scott Stern, one of our colleagues
who teaches entrepreneurial strategy,
is one of our best people in this field, makes that point.
And in fact, there'll be a slide that will illustrate
this just in a few minutes.
But absolutely.
Picking your investors is really critical.
Ben?
AUDIENCE: I wonder how hard it is
to change the momentum of something
like Wal-Mart, who's publicly traded.
But for example, with Harpoon it had the option
of being bought out, and they consciously
made a decision as privately held company
to move towards employee owned.
So is it too hard to manipulate Wal-Mart,
and should we just focus on advancing
the Costcos, and the Market Baskets, and the Harpoons,
and the Allagashes of the world, and just kind of let Wal-Mart
reap what it sows with its illegal labor practices.
TOM KOCHAN: Well, that's a good question.
I'm not sure that I have the answer.
Should we let Wal-Mart alone because it's the toughest nut
to crack in some ways, or because it's the biggest--
it would have the biggest effect,
should we put resources there.
I do believe that it's a sign of some mental problems when
you keep beating yourself against a wall, right?
And I think if you can't really change it,
then you have to go where you can really bring about change.
Yes, we should perhaps continue to put pressure
on companies like Wal-Mart, but perhaps we
have to go where the opportunities are.
And that's why courses like this,
educating the next generation of leaders, is so,
I think, important.
Because we can make a difference.
And if we can get people to think about the choices
and know that they've got choices,
and recognize that there are some directions that they can
take their company, and as you go out into the companies
that you will be employed in and the people in the online course
go out and work in a variety of settings,
you can be raising these questions.
And in fact, I'll tell you a secret.
There are some Sloan School graduates in some companies
not to be mentioned, but similar to what
we're talking about here, who are
raising those questions today, and bringing some
of their executives back to campus to see if they can learn
more about what would it take, is it possible to do it.
So I'm maybe an internal optimist on this.
I'm not naive, it's a big road to travel,
but I think we can make a difference.
And so I want to go where the opportunities are, perhaps more
than where the resistance is greatest.
Well, this is just one way of proceeding with the high road
strategies that are really important,
there are opportunities for moving forward.
And you had-- the folks in the online course--
have had the experience of testing this idea.
Because one of the assignments was
to go out and interview someone in an organization,
in an industry of interest to you,
and you asked them a series of questions
that come from the research that's
been done on what does it take to build a high road,
high performance work organization,
and what does it take to meet the aspirations
of the workforce to have satisfying work experiences.
And that battery of questions then ended
with a very simple question to the student who
was collecting the data on the basis of an interview
with an employee, and said to the student,
if you were offered a job in this organization,
would you take it or not.
And the numbers, the raw numbers were 60% said yes,
but 40% said no.
I didn't hear that this was the kind
of organizational environment that
would allow me to use my skills, or to have a satisfying work
experience.
That's a pretty remarkable distribution,
that 40% after hearing about an organization, say no thank you,
I don't think I would take a job there.
I think we've got a lot of work to do.
But the good news in this is that you
do a little bit of statistical analysis,
and you ask do these high performance, high road
characteristics and good job characteristics
predict whether someone would take a job or not.
The good news for employers is that if you provide
these kinds of opportunities and features in your workplace,
you have a 75% chance of attracting the talent
that you need.
That people will accept a job, it's not 60%, it's now 75%.
That's a substantial change, and so the good news
is that firms can attract the kind of talent
and perhaps retain the kind of talent
that they need to support a high performance organization,
if they invest and engage in the right set of practices.
So that's another reason why I think
we need to do more of this.
We need to keep asking about what's
going on in organizations.
There is a growing number of online platforms
and various kinds of use of information technology
that we'll talk about in just a moment that is providing
more information on firms.
Glass Door is probably the best known,
where it collects employee ratings of their employer.
Well, we need to use that kind of data--
those data to understand what is the difference
between an attractive place to work
and a less attractive place to work, and then
use our skills to move to where the good jobs are,
so that we discipline, and again bring up the lower road firms.
So I'm encouraged by the good jobs survey exercise.
I hope people do that, maybe informally.
You don't have to go out and ask 25 questions every time,
but you can ask the key questions,
because you know what they are, and you
know what you're looking for, and you
know what's really important.
Then we came to this question about well, unions.
Unions have this great phrase in the United States.
In the 20th century, they say, we're
the organization that brought you the weekend,
and they're right.
They're the organization that really negotiated more time
off, holiday pay, vacation pay, sick leave, weekend
over time rates for working the unattractive hours,
or working more than 40 hours, and so on.
And so unions have a very long history in the United States
and around the world for improving wages, hours,
and working conditions and helping to lift up
the standards in our economies, but we all know that
particularly here in the United States
but in many countries around the world,
unions are on the decline.
And in fact, many people, probably in the online course,
never even thought much about unions.
Many of the people here at the Sloan School.
It's not on the front burner of their minds
to think about unions as a force for economic advancement,
in our economy or in their particular work lives.
So we felt it was important to engage this question.
Is there a future?
Do we still need them?
And the views were quite diverse and a good discussion.
But I think there's a dominant view that, well, unions
played an important role in the past
in the way in which they function,
and they had some negative features as well.
They brought maybe too much rigidity,
and some work rules that impeded productivity,
and that continue to impede productivity in some cases.
They were resistant to change, because people
got used to the way in which they were working
and to the benefits and to their control over job opportunities
and so on.
They restricted access to union jobs in some cases,
to their relatives or people who looked like them.
And so there's a history of discrimination in some unions.
That is not a very attractive part
of the history of labor either.
So unions have a positive and a negative historical setting--
or historical record that we need to understand.
But the question is what will replace this void,
or fill this void, that's now left in the United States
and in some other countries as unions decline?
Is there a way to revise unions, rebuild them,
to create organizations or entities that advocate
for workers in a modern way?
That was a source of discussion.
It's a source of debate in this country,
and in many countries around the world.
And basically, I think most people in the course
have come to the conclusion that yes, there is a role,
but it can't be just, as I put it in the textbook, your father
or your grandfather's union.
Because it was mostly a male dominated labor movement.
It no longer, by the way, is.
We're now in the United States at just about 50%
of union members are women as well as men.
And so it's changed over time, but that's kind of the history.
But there's a recognition that unions have to change.
There seems to be, it says here "a conscious effort
to revitalize the way that unions work in order
to meet the needs of the most vulnerable workers
in recent years," particularly, "in a globalized world."
So we're seeing unions try to work
to deal with the terrible problems that have occurred,
for example, in Bangladesh, where
the first terrible factory fire that took over 100 workers'
lives, and then the terrible factory collapse that
took over 1,000 workers' lives in Bangladesh, where standards
were not being attended to.
And so out of that has come a global effort of unions
from Europe and from around the world to say,
we need to work together with companies in something that's
called the Accord, that is, a negotiated agreement
for arbitration, for safety provisions,
for safety inspections, and for workers to have
a voice in that society.
Long way to go on that, and in fact,
some American corporations say we
want to address these issues, but we
don't want to include unions in that process.
So there is a parallel effort called the Alliance,
with firms like the Gap and Wal-Mart and others from the US
that are going it alone.
I don't know which way is the best.
I'm not an expert on Bangladesh, I've
only been there on one very, very short visit,
so I wouldn't make a judgment of what the right strategy is.
But here we have efforts to try to do something
about global labor standards by bringing
about some coalition of the local organizations,
the local unions to the extent that they
exist, international unions working
with companies and with brands to try to enforce standards
in those factories.
We talked about Nike in the course,
we talked about how they went through this process.
We talked about Apple's struggles in China
and the suicides and the terrible conditions
in organizations like Fox Con.
This is the front line of worker voice and representation,
where we have to invent new ways to make things work.
We also talked about the role of labor management partnerships.
We've been privileged to work with Kaiser-Permanente
for several decades now, in helping to understand and study
the labor management partnership they put in place,
and to work with them to improve it.
Because all of these institutions
are sort of fragile, and there are always
tensions that are involved.
But here's an organization that has worked with its unions
in health care.
And now on the front lines you now
have 3,500 what they call unit based teams.
Teams of employees, doctors, nurses, technicians, service
employees, people who--
the janitors in the organization work to say
how can we improve operations?
How can we reduce injuries-- back injuries
for the workforce?
How can we reduce the infections that we sometimes
find in hospitals?
What are we doing to change the operation,
to serve our customers, to use technology
to make sure that we're checking on our clients or our patients
out there, and saying gee, I looked on your record
and I noticed that you haven't been
in to fill your prescriptions, or you
haven't come in for your scheduled appointments.
What's going on, and how can we get those issues addressed
more effectively?
Working in teams, together, labor and management
saying this is part of how we're going
to create world class health care delivery, and at
the same time, then have industry leading wages.
And so there are ways to do this.
We've learned from organizations like Saturn that
started that way, but didn't get the kind of support
we've learned from Kaiser.
We need more of those kinds of organizations
according to many of you.
But you're also thinking more creatively.
And there was a lively discussion--
I couldn't pass putting this concept
of a digital union, which came right off the discussion board.
That created quite a set of comments
over the course of the term.
And basically by digital unions, we're
really talking about ways to use information.
To use online platforms the way businesses
are using them, to share information.
What-- where are the good jobs, where
are there not such good jobs.
How can we mobilize in China?
The way workers mobilize today is through their smartphones.
They don't have independent unions,
but they do have the technology, and they
use that to build their own network when
they feel most aggrieved and the need to do something about it.
Now they have to often do something
in a pretty spontaneous way, and sometimes
in a very strong resistance, sometimes
even in a violent way, and sometimes
even holding the plant manager hostage
in his or her own facility until something can be negotiated.
But they're using technology to try
to find new ways of meeting worker needs.
Then there are other organizations that we cited.
Different kinds of organizations that aren't even called unions.
Some of them use the term, but they're really
outside of the traditional form of unions.
This one up in the upper left hand corner here,
Restaurant Opportunities Center, was cited in the course
a number of times, but it's worth focusing on,
because it's a very interesting organization that
came out of a tragedy.
It was formed after our terrible experience
in September 11th, when the Twin Towers in New York
collapsed from a terrorist attack.
And out of that, there was a restaurant
called the Windows on the World at the top that obviously
collapsed with it, and many employees died in that tragedy.
And so this organization was formed
to try to deal with the families and to help people cope
with that terrible disaster.
And what it's evolved into is an organization
that works to both improve job conditions for people
in restaurants, but also to publicize good practices
for sustainable food, and for food preparation,
and for the way in which the workforce is treated,
the way in which the customers are treated.
They encourage customers to rate not only
the quality of the food, but also the quality of the working
conditions, and ask about it in the restaurants.
And they're working to stay outside
of the traditions of labor relations,
to find new ways to train employees,
to provide information on where good jobs are,
to make sure that they are taking care of the safety
and health and providing more information,
and working with restaurant owners.
They are working with some of the most innovative restaurant
owners in New York and in San Francisco
and in other country--
other cities in the United States,
to promote this as part of their good company, good job
strategy.
And so this is just another way in which
creative minds, young people, in this case, young people
and immigrants working together, largely, to say we
can find ways to do this in a modern fashion that
is responsive to both consumers, to employees,
and to the businesses that operate.
So I think we're in an interesting time.
Will these grow to be large enough to have an effect?
I don't know, but I think it's really up to all of you,
all of you, wherever you happen to be in the world,
to invent the kinds of organizations that
work effectively for you in the kind of work settings
that you find yourself today.
And out of that will come some models that will grow, perhaps
over time, and have an effect.
Well, we didn't just talk about what others need to do.
We spent a good deal of time talking about what individuals
need to do.
And we emphasize, obviously, education as a cornerstone,
as a necessary condition, but we also
emphasize the need to be proactive
and engage in a career planning exercise.
And so one of the assignments was
to fill out the online questionnaire
provided by the Department of Labor
and it's vocational and career planning tool, which
is just a standard one.
It's not any better, I don't think,
or any worse than what you find elsewhere.
The advantage is it's free, and that's
why we used it, because we didn't want to have
to have people pay for it.
But it was the starting point.
And out of that completing that, it
provides information on what one's aptitudes are,
what they might be good at, what jobs and occupations match
those aptitudes very well, what levels of education
are needed to get to different levels
of the occupational structure in that particular area,
and that provides an opportunity to say
I can now make a roadmap for how to go from where I am
to realizing what I want to do.
But we also asked people to go out and talk
to people in those occupations to get a firsthand sense of it.
So that they have a more personalized view of what is it
that this job is really all about.
And I think when I read the responses, that's
where the learning really started to take place.
And so the ability to go out and engage with people
and really learn from their experiences
is so critical to making these career planning
guides come to life.
And look at the interesting mix of jobs and occupations here.
I got a kick out of-- this is only a sample.
I just took some of the kind of more interesting ones.
I guess they're all interesting, but we have everything
from engineers and HR managers and labor leaders and artists
and futurist.
Someone's going to-- is very interested in being a futurist.
Holacracy consultant.
Anyone know what whole holacracy is?
Probably not.
Well, holacracy is basically organizational consultant
who works to share power and authority
throughout the organization, and to try
to reduce or even completely get rid of hierarchy.
It's very controversial.
It has some very strong advocates
and it has some very strong critics,
but here's someone who is really committed to it
and is going to go out and wants to make a career of it,
and I applaud that energy.
A sports agent.
Psychometrician.
Technical writers, artists, graphic artists.
So these are jobs--
these are all jobs that people will
feel that they will find what they really want to do.
And I want you to keep these in mind
when we think about in two slides down
the road here, about the role of technology.
Because one of the big worries in this course that
was voiced by so many people, is what's
going to happen to our jobs as technology comes along.
So I want to come to that in a moment.
But look at, these are jobs that are not
going to necessarily go away and not
going to be taken over by robots or artificial intelligence
in the near future.
They will be influenced by them, for sure,
but we'll come to that in a moment.
What are some of the themes that came up in the career
development planning process, this
is just a sampling from both this year and last year.
The themes were almost identical across the two years.
Very strong emphasis on getting the credentials,
getting some stamp of approval that I've got the skills,
that my customers can trust me to come in and do
that work in someone's house, or in community, or in taking
care of people in my family.
And so that's a growing recognition
that that's important.
The importance on having networks, and building
these networks so that they know where the good opportunities
are and have access to them.
Emphasis on lifelong learning and emphasis
on courses like this, that we can use this online technology
perhaps to augment the basic education
over the course of time to support the lifelong learning
process.
And then recognition that people will have to keep their skills
current, because they will be changing careers and moving
across occupations most likely over time.
And then finally, this really important
point that sometimes the career planning process doesn't
pay enough attention to, that we don't make
these decisions in isolation.
We live in a community, we live in a family, we have partners,
we have children, and many of us have
children or other relatives who depend on us.
Sometimes elderly parents who need to be cared for.
And so as we make these plans, one
of the requests in the planning exercise
was don't just tell us what you want
to do, but make sure that you tell us
how it will affect everyone else in your immediate family
or social setting.
And so that's an important part of this career planning.
I think we can do this.
I don't believe that we should overdo career planning.
We can't predict the future completely,
and we shouldn't be so determined that there's
only one course for the future.
But we should plan to be ready to take advantage
of opportunities when they come along,
and know which directions we want to go in and not
be afraid to take those steps when an opportunity is
open to us.
So the career planning and the personal development plan
process in this course was a vital part of what we did.
But then we come to this question,
and this is a great frame.
I wish I could take time take credit for this,
will technology eat our jobs?
But I didn't invent that term.
I did a little bit of a Facebook chat
with a very talented leader from Sama group.
Her name is Leila Janah, and she runs an organization
that really works with low income people
all over the globe to try to help them to use technology
to improve their livelihood, and to gain access
to better opportunities.
And so she raised the question, and we had this discussion,
will technology eat our jobs.
We took a pretty strong position in this.
And here we are at MIT, and we have
some of the people who are known for being some of the more
pessimistic, and we have some people who are known
for being more optimistic.
We've got 'em all.
At MIT, I always say, that if you--
we have 1,000 faculty members and on any given issue,
those 1,000 faculty members will have
at least 3,000 points of view.
And on this, I think, we can see people all over the place,
because we don't really know.
The serious answer is we don't know how rapid
or how broad scale artificial intelligence, machine learning,
and all of these other things are going to take over jobs.
But we know that if we don't do anything, if we let it happen,
then we're at the risk of the worst scenario.
But if we use technology to augment work,
to augment and strengthen the role of human judgment,
then we might be able to have the best of both worlds.
And that's what even the IBM Watson creators emphasized here
at MIT in a technology day a couple of months ago.
And so we can do this.
We will have displacement.
There's no question that jobs are going to be displaced.
The question is are we going to be ahead of the curve
and really work to make sure that we take care
of those people who are displaced,
provide them opportunities to move to where the job--
the good jobs are, make sure that they've
got the skills built up over time so that they
can make those changes, and then get on with this process.
So I think we can use it.
I think we're going to see more of these workers centered
apps that help us adapt to technology.
I used the example, we had an interview
with Sherpa Share, the founders that
use the Uber technology to share information
with the drivers on what their real earnings are,
and now we're seeing drivers use that app in new creative ways,
and other competing apps are also out there,
even since we did that interview a couple of months ago.
So I'm excited about the use of technology to improve work,
but we've got to harness it.
We've got to be proactive if we're going to be successful.
And what about entrepreneurship?
And again, there's a lot of hyperbolic entrepreneurship.
That all new jobs are created by startups.
Well, that's not quite true, but a large number of new jobs
are created by startups.
So the importance of startups, the importance
of entrepreneurship, is beyond question.
We've got to make sure that we have
a healthy growth of new enterprises,
but we've got to do this in a more inclusive way.
We've had terrible scandals, and again, I'm
glad it's all over the news these days, about how male
dominated Silicon Valley is with its startups,
and how difficult it is for women to move to higher
levels of leadership in that part of our growing
sector of the economy.
And how difficult it is for women to get money
from venture capitalists.
Well, we've got to change that and build a more inclusive
capitalism if we are going to be successful,
and in fact we know some things.
And so that's where the Hitachi foundation
has been so successful, in building a program
to help young entrepreneurs to find those investors,
to pick those investors, as Greg said earlier in this session
this afternoon, to make sure that they pick investors that
are supportive of growth opportunities.
We didn't use this little example,
but I like it, because maybe I like the name, called Beepi.
But Beepi is an online used car business.
Started in San Francisco, spreading
to other parts of the country.
We used it in our on campus course as a case,
and so our students in the room here are familiar with it.
But basically Beepi faced this question, who would you
buy a used car from?
Do you want to buy it from someone who is a full time
employee, who was signing off and certifying
that this car has been inspected,
this car has been repaired, this car is safe,
and this car is worth the price that is being asked,
or do you want to buy it from someone
who doesn't have that same kind of commitment, is just hired
as a contractor to go through the motions to do it?
And Beepi faced investors with debates about that,
and they went in the direction of hiring and staying
with a business strategy that says
we think trust is so important, and quality is so important,
that we're going to keep the full time jobs
with decent wages and benefits.
Now that's a choice that young firms also can make,
but I am under no illusion of the pressures
that startups face to conserve costs,
because they don't have much money,
and they don't have a lot of resources.
So it's very difficult. But if we don't imprint good jobs
right at the beginning, it's going
to be very hard to bring them in a little bit later.
So making sure that we worry about inclusive
entrepreneurship and inclusive capitalism
right from the beginning is very important. [? Astrid? ?]
AUDIENCE: I was just thinking, you
talk about the US and the unions,
where [INAUDIBLE] declined made the most.
One place where I feel that the US can help us
in other parts of the world is about taking risk.
Because here, if you're an entrepreneur, you go for it
but you fail, maybe because the technology
wasn't such a good idea as you hoped for,
you have a legal system, an environmental--
and like social ecosystem, but that you go from [INAUDIBLE].
I think in lots of other places in the world,
you've got two red lines on you, and you're a loser.
And the funny part is you are hidden away,
because you're a loser.
So think there, there is a lot to gain with technology,
but also [INAUDIBLE] here in America,
that you can help us in the rest of the world
to be more entrepreneurial, and to try.
TOM KOCHAN: I think that's a very important point,
I'm glad you made it.
In the online course, there's also an essay
from one of our Sloan graduates from a number of years ago,
John Jacques Degroof, who's written
about European entrepreneurship, and he works on this in Europe.
And he's lamenting the fact that Europe
is so slow to have that kind of infrastructure, risk taking,
and support for entrepreneurs, and says we've
got to really change that.
So he's reinforcing the important point
that you made, and I think it's worth paying attention
to some of the strengths that we have here, as we move forward.
Well, you went through this very difficult, challenging,
and for many of you, rewarding experience
of saying all right, enough of this talk about it.
Enough of this reading about it, enough of the watching
boring videos.
Let's try to negotiate the next generation's social contract.
And so I applaud the energy that you put into it,
those that participated, and our colleagues here on campus
who helped to facilitate it.
And so I just want to share a little bit of the settlements
and what you came away from that exercise with.
It's a difficult exercise to do.
It's challenging because of the differences in time zones
and so on, but I think it's worth
doing, perhaps maybe in some modified way, some of you
some good suggestions.
And look, we again had a very broad distribution.
We had 44 countries participating
in this experience, a nice broad array.
And here's some of the priorities
that you chose to focus on.
And there were a set of, as you recall,
workforce development, compensation fairness,
representation, organizational performance, family
and community, and basically not one of those dominated.
There was a good distribution of priorities.
Everyone recognized the importance of all of these.
There was clearly a higher preference for workforce
development, and a little bit more
for fairness and nondiscrimination,
but the varied interests said just what
you said early on in the course about how
important multiple things are to you in the workplace.
And so lifelong learning dominated,
voice and representation, the concern for productivity
and flexibility in organizations dominated,
and work and family came through as well.
And these are just some numbers.
I'm not going to go through these,
they just reflect basically what I said a minute ago,
because we're running a little bit short on time.
But let's look at what you agreed to.
Well, we had about 157 agreements.
Some of them were two party, some were three party,
some were four party.
But across those clusters, what you did is you
embodied the knowledge of the high performance
work organizations.
You said we can't just focus on training,
and many of your agreements had training
combined with performance.
Training combined with compensation.
Training combined with making sure it was inclusive.
Some of the European examples said
we're even going to find ways to bring it to the platform
economy, and see if we can't bring some
of our training, experience, and our representative models
into that sphere.
And so a very strong emphasis on lifelong learning,
on career planning, the notion that people should
have representation, emphasis on partnerships, strong commitment
to flexibility in organizations, strong commitment
to profit sharing.
That came through in many of these agreements as well.
And so I think you found ways to reach across interest group
lines to find ways to find common ground.
Now if you can do it in this exercise,
then perhaps why can't we do it in our broader societies?
I would urge everyone to take the same issues
and move them to other settings.
So where did we end up?
Well the last thing we asked is what
are the messages to the next generation leaders, HR
professionals, labor educators, and government officials?
And our friends at Cornell helped us out on the HR side.
So my good friend Lee Dyer, who led that class,
and his students provided these next three slides
on what do they see, because they are
moving into this profession.
So what is it that they see as important for the HR profession
to attend to?
And they emphasize three themes, globalization, technology,
and demographics, and on the basis of that
came up with a set of slides and points
on what it means for recruitment.
That they have to recognize that there
has to be a good fit between the competencies,
the organization needs, and what employees need to bring.
They need to develop new sets of technical knowledge,
emphasizing the technical and STEM skills,
but also combining that with problem solving,
and being able to work collaboratively in teams.
So they embody the integration of technology
and organizational skills and understanding the need
to be responsive to people's differences
in culture and backgrounds.
So I think on the recruitment side,
that's a really powerful set of points.
On the globalization side, they saw the positives
and the negatives.
That yes, globalization creates an opportunity
to compete for talent all across the world,
and at the same time, provides more diversity
that we need to manage effectively,
but it also provides some low wage havens,
and that's going to put pressure on our compensation structure.
So they were quite realistic in having to manage
the tensions of globalization.
And on technology, it came back again
to emphasize the complimentary nature that technology can
play, if they are proactive.
And if there's one message to the HR community, in fact,
I delivered it this morning to a group of HR professionals
in talking about these issues, is
that they have to get out in front of technology.
They have to be part of the technology designers
and enablers to make work really complements to technology.
And I think that's an opportunity for the HR
profession.
And then they commented as well on demographics,
along the lines that we've talked about
for mentoring the next generation workforce and so on.
So thank you, to our colleagues at Cornell for those inputs.
But you also raised in your own conversations issues
around implications for worker advocates,
for needing to listen to the workforce,
to learn from the workforce, to build the new organizations,
not to be just captivated by the way in which we did things
in the past.
To build on the strengths of the past,
but to look to the future, and particularly
to use information technologies as building
new sources of power.
And for those of us in the education community,
emphasizing we've got to be more creative in using
all this technology, online learning, and other mechanisms
to provide good guidance for the next generation workforce,
and to provide opportunities for continuing
to learn as we go along.
And then the toughest nut, obviously,
is breaking the gridlock that we find in the United States
and in some other countries over national politics.
And here we emphasize right from the beginning
that the lessons always come from the local level first.
And so if we can build on the innovations that
are happening that we've talked about throughout this course
at the local level, then maybe someday
soon our national leaders will wake up and say maybe it's time
for us to start working together.
So our bottom line message to the next generation workforce,
to all of us, and to all of you, I
guess I'm not the next generation workforce,
but you are the next generation workforce, is education.
Preschool, formal schooling, and lifelong learning.
Education throughout one's life, making
sure you explore, but don't become
a victim of too tight a career plan, but take opportunities
when they are available.
Keep those skills current, work together, keep your resume up
to date, and one foot in the external labor market
to use that as a source of power, and get involved.
And together, if there's a bottom line here,
we can shape the future of work.
So where are we going?
Once again, we emphasize the high road importance,
rebuild bargaining power, get the parties working together,
and then let me give you the real bottom line
from two students from our discussion board.
And I'll just read these and end on this note.
And one said, "Taking this course has
given me hope that the future of work and the path I
wish to take after college.
The future of work depends on the mindset
of individual workers."
Of all of you.
"If the workers are hardworking and have confidence,
the future of work will toil in their favor."
I think that's a beautiful phrase
and I appreciate the author's offering it.
And then one that came just today.
"I came away feeling a personal 'call to action' to help shape
the Future of Work myself--
that indeed, the Future of Work is up to us.
We have do-- we have--
we do have the power to shape the Future of Work
by bringing together all the stakeholders."
These are the bottom line messages of this course.
This is what we all put all this energy, all of you
put all the energy you put into it, and the online version,
and our friends here on campus.
And I think together we can shape the future of work,
so we just need to move forward.
We will put all of this material online, it will stay online.
And you'll be encouraged to come back and use the material,
maybe use it in teaching others in the future.
So it'll stay on the platform for anyone who wants to use it,
or anyone who wants to join and use it in the future.
We think that together, if we use
what we know about how work has been structured in the past,
on what worked in the past, what stopped working in more
recent years, why the world of work
has to change to keep up with changes in technology
and keep up with the people who are doing the work,
we can make a difference.
So I want to thank you all for the many hours of effort
that you put into this course.
I want to thank you for taking an interest in improving
the future of work, and I hope that together we'll
all make a difference.
Thank you very much.
AUDIENCE: [APPLAUSE]