#92—Elizabeth Altman: Rethinking the Definition of a Workforce in the Modern Era

Outthinkers

Dr. Elizabeth J. Altman is an associate professor of management at the Manning School of Business, University of Massachusetts Lowell, and guest editor of the MIT Sloan Management Review Future of the Workforce project. Altman served as a visiting assistant professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point in Fall 2018 and has served as a visiting scholar at the Harvard Business School. Altman teaches strategy, organizational theory, and human resources management in undergraduate, MBA, and doctoral programs. Her research focuses on strategy, innovation, platform businesses and ecosystems, leadership in the digital economy, organizational identity, and organizational change.

It used to be, your workforce were your employees. But today, 30-40% of a company’s workforce is made up by contractors! Add to this the increasing amount of work being done by suppliers and partners and you see that what composes your workforce is much different than what it once was. This raises lots of questions.

Elizabeth has spent 19 years in industry. She was a vice president at Motorola in executive and leadership roles in industrial design, product development engineering, manufacturing, marketing, and strategy. Awarded a U.S. Dept. of Commerce and Japanese government fellowship, Altman worked as an engineer for Sony in Japan. She lectures and consults worldwide for multi-national clients on strategy and platform businesses and has served on corporate and non-profit boards.

Her work has been published in the Harvard Business Review (HBR), MIT Sloan Management Review, Journal of Management Studies, Marketing Letters, and other internationally recognized management journals and books. Her HBR article with Prof. Andrei Hagiu was selected for inclusion in an edition of the “HBR 10 Must Reads 2019” book and included in “HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Business Model Innovation.” She also co-authored the book, The Innovator’s Guide to Growth: Putting Disruptive Innovation to Work, (Harvard Business Press), as well as the recent Workforce Ecosystems (2023).

In this episode, she shares:

• The new role of institutions in society, and how workforce employee and stakeholder sentiment play into that
• The actual definition of a workforce, and how it has even expanded into including questions like: What is a workforce? Who is in the workforce? and how do you think about it from an ecosystem perspective to incorporate technologies as an integral part of them?
• How to consider goals and incentives for employees given this broader perspective?
• How do you build culture when your workforce is composed by a large percentage of contractors and suppliers?
• How AI and machine learning technology can now be considered an official part of the workforce in many cases

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Episode Timeline:

00:00—Highlight from today's episode

01:07—Introducing Elizabeth + The topic of today’s episode

2:55—If you really know me, you know that...

4:19—What is your definition of strategy?

6:44—Why do you think the focus in companies has shifted to more than just financial performance in this era?

8:34—Tell us about your journey into researching workforce ecosystems.

11:27—Breaking down the types of employees in a typical organization

12:17—A new defi

Thank you to our guest. Thank you to our executive producer, Karina Reyes, our editor, Zach Ness, and the rest of the team. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. I'm your host, Kaihan Krippendorff. Thank you for listening.
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