00:00:06
Dean James: Peter, thanks for
joining us. Peter: Thank you for have me.
- Glad that you're here.
00:00:10
I'd like to start
with an origin story of sorts. So if you were to think
back across the span of your
00:00:17
life, what are two or three
instances or moments or experiences that really
propelled you for
00:00:23
a career in higher education and a career in labor
economics, more specifically?
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Getting to college was a
transformative time for most everybody. I have pretty big
case of attention deficit
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disorder, which was not treated.
Of course, they didn't even know what it was, right? But when I
got to college, I realized if I
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could lock myself in the library
and study, then I could focus and get things done. And I went
from being a not particularly
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distinguished high school
student to a distinguished college student. So that was
certainly one of them. I would
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say, as with many of our
colleagues here, we didn't necessarily set out to be
faculty members, you know. And a
00:01:07
large number of us intended to
be lawyers. At least when I was in college, if you were good in
science, you wanted to be a
00:01:13
doctor, if you were good and
everything else, you want to be a lawyer. And my father was a
lawyer. And so that sort of made
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sense. But my father died when I
was in college, so that kind of derailed that ambition a little
bit. So maybe that was the other
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one. But even then, I was in
graduate school, I went to Oxford, with the idea of
just goofing around for a while
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and coming back here, and I
discovered you couldn't do that. You had to enter a degree
program. So I did that, and I
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was not quite done. So I got a
postdoc at MIT, and then I kind of woke up, and I was a
professor. You know, was already
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down the pike a little bit,
without so much a conscious choice early on, saying this is
what I was going to do. You
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know, I didn't know an awful lot
about careers, right? I didn't know what business careers were
like. I didn't know what
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consulting jobs were like, nor
did anybody else. At Oxford, I went to see the careers people
at one point, and they said, "You
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have the rest of your life to
worry about your career. Don't worry about it now." So very
different advice, right, than
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when we got here. Very different advice. So
how did you come to learn about the field that you chose to
study and pursue?
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Well, as an undergraduate, I was
around a lot of these topics. I was interested in the issue of
how we regulate economic forces.
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So I was interested in a lot of
the legislative efforts to try to constrain, guide, harness
economic forces, and
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particularly not crush people in
the process. So I was interested in those general questions. And
then that takes you, you know,
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into these topics. And also in
England, labor economics looked a little different. It wasn't
dominated by large data sets
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and, you know, econometrics, it
was much more go get data and look at it. So it looks more
like what we do here, maybe,
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than what you would see in an
economics department. So you were in graduate school
in the late '70s. It was the time
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period where labor unions were
starting to be a bit on the decline, and there was an
emergence in the management
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literature on different theories
of management. So how did that, or did that shift in how we
thought about labor and the
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workforce influence your own
work? Yeah. Well, career changes,
right? Because I wrote my thesis
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about inflation. And as soon as
I finished it, inflation kind of disappeared. So that topic was
gone. And then, you know, when I
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came to the Wharton School,
there were still seven people here who studied unions, right?
And it used to be that, if you
00:03:55
looked in corporations, the
executive vice president was industrial relations. Human
resources reported to the
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industrial relations people. And
part of my early career, when I came back to the US, was
studying what caused these
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unions to collapse. And it
wasn't just economic, global economic pressures, it was a
sort of concerted effort by
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employers who had sort of
decided that the old bargain that you just should accept
unions and strikes and, you
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know, not try to fight them—
they didn't buy that any longer. So it was a shift in values, I
think, that led companies to take
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off the gloves, as it were, and
started to take the unions apart, you know. So that started
in 1981, which was— with the
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recession. That was, you know,
at the time, the worst recession since the Great Depression. And
that was part of it, was
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dismantling unions. Part of what
happened then is, "Okay. What do we got now?" Well, because part
of dismantling unions was also
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inside the great corporations
restructuring themselves down to shrink. And a lot of it was the
belief that they were bloated,
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and they probably were, having
grown up in a period of regulation, stable markets, lots
of planning. And that all
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kind of went out the window. So
that was probably me talking about that issue of what happens
when we got rid of lifetime
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employment. That was my work in
the 1990s, trying to think about that. And at the time, you know,
a lot of people didn't believe
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it had changed, because we had
had that for 45 years or so, 50 years, that stable model of
big corporations. And just hard
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to believe that it disappeared
that quickly. But in fact, it did. So speaking of change, and in
some cases, transformational
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change pretty rapidly, is the
way in which the workforce has changed as a result of, for
example, the pandemic. Remote
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work, which wasn't something we
were talking about 10 years ago, we are now trying to actively
navigate. So as you think about
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some of these big contextual
variables that are now influencing the workplace, what
is your advice to organizations
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and to leaders about how we
should be thinking about and preparing— advice to a Dean or
faculty— how we should be
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preparing the workforce of the
future, given the shifts that we're seeing?
- Well,
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you know— and you see this, I'm
sure, in practice. But also in university. We have a really
hard time with uncertainty, and
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we would love, love, love to be
able to plan. And to plan, you really need certainty of some
kind, you know. And I think the
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advice is, we have to get more
comfortable with uncertainty. And that planning when you have
uncertainty is dangerous, right?
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You— assuming you're going in
this direction, you start making investments in that direction,
and then you discover that, if
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you're wrong, you would have
been better off just waiting right? And I think with with AI
in particular, we're absolutely
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in that right now. The
assumptions we made about what was going to happen have been
proving wrong, wrong and wrong.
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Like driverless trucks, right?
So by 2019, they were supposed to take over. Every consulting firm
had made that story. They've all
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taken those reports down off
their websites now. They just bury them someplace. But they
all believed it, right? And I
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think it happens because
we really, really want to know what the answer is. And people
are willing to tell you, but
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they don't know, right? So I
think the problem for us, we see this in executive and some of
our colleagues here have been
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trying to persuade employers to
think about this for maybe 10 years or so. How do you deal
with uncertainty? You don't have
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to ignore it, but you don't have
to just make a guess either, right? So I think that's our
problem, right?
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And would you say it's the same
kind of perspective when you think about remote work and how
we should be thinking about the
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management of a workforce,
whether it's in person, whether it's in a hybrid environment,
and the way in which technology
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has influenced how people can
engage with the workplace? Yeah. I think employers are— you
know, are really in the driver's
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seat on this, right? There's no
country in the developed world where employers have more
ability to control things in the
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US, right? And they're making
the calls. I think what concerns me is they're not making
sensible calls on this. They're
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not thinking through what will
work for us as an employer. And I think the problem is in lots
of places, they're just assuming
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that having people work remotely
will be just like if they were in the office, right? And it's
not. I think one of the
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things that we didn't understand
before the pandemic, and before remote work, is how things
actually got done in offices,
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and how much of it was
relational based. Right? That you need something done, you call
this person that you know over
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here. And some of the research
that we did, and some of the studies of hybrid workplaces,
discovered that, you know,
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that's still what they try to
do. If we need something from that team over there, we say,
who in our team knows anybody
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over there? But the problem is
with remote work continuing in some places, average job tenure
is four years. We have cohorts
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of employees in these companies
who really don't know anybody there, because they were never
face to face. And so we're kind
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of running down the stock of
relational capital we've got. And, you know,
employers have to think about,
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how do we rebuild this so that
people will figure out how to get things done? You could do
it. Some of the companies like
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GitHub, you know, and the
virtual companies, all virtual, they figured out ways to do it.
But they've got rule books that are
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like this thick, you know,
telling you, "Here's how you have to describe what you're doing
and keep a record of it so
00:10:25
everybody can see it on a common
document." And I don't think most employers are willing to go to
that much effort. So the choice
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is, you know, work is not
getting done as well as it could be, and there's now a fair
amount of sophisticated research
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showing problems with this.
Productivity, innovation problems. And the question is,
okay, employers, you're in
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charge. What are you going to do?
Right now? You've been just assuming it's all working. It's
not.
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So you've had the opportunity to
work around the world both as a scholar, as a consultant, as an
author. What— have you
00:11:03
identified— are there any sort
of universal truths or themes that you have found either about
companies and organizations or
00:11:11
about employees, regardless of
region or geographical— Yeah. Well, I think, you know,
human needs don't differ all
00:11:20
that much around the world. And
we like to think they do. We, you know, like to think these
national differences and culture
00:11:28
are overwhelming. But, you know,
human needs don't differ all that much. I'd say what's really
different is how employers deal
00:11:37
with them or don't deal with
them. And that stems from how much power the workers have. A
lot of that is political power,
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right? So if you're in a country
that has a Labor Party and the labor has a strong political
role, then employers take labor
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issues and managing people much
more seriously, right? And if you don't, they don't think to
go in that direction, you know.
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And despite, for example, in the
US, the sort of 30-year run of research all saying this,
showing that this really matters
00:12:11
and pays off, it doesn't always
align with people's guts who are in power. And so they go with
their gut, you know. So I'd say
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that's the big difference, is
people's motivations, needs and things don't differ that much.
What does differ across
00:12:27
countries is how seriously the
employers are willing to deal with those as a way of trying to
be more effective.
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So as you think about a lifespan
of work and investigation into organizations and employees, is
there one thing that you have
00:12:46
seen time and time again that
companies just get wrong? Yeah, I think in US companies
anyway, I think now, anyway— so in
00:12:54
the last 15 years— they are just
underinvesting. You know, not just in employees and training
and development, but they're
00:13:03
underinvesting in management.
And we're seeing this right now almost, as we speak,
companies trying to take layers
00:13:10
of management out. Sounds like a
reasonable thing, except what you're doing then is you're
really expanding the spans of
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control. So one supervisor has
20 people, right? And you just don't— can't keep track of
what's going on with those
00:13:24
people, even in their work. You
know, how are they doing in their jobs? And we're trying to
make the supervisors individual
00:13:30
contributors as well as
supervising all these people, right? So I think we are
systematically, particularly in
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public companies, under-
investing. Training is largely disappearing, you know. So a
third of US managers say they
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never had any training in
management before becoming a manager. So I think that's the
big thing, which we're seeing
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systematically in the US. You
know, a lot of ideas from the US translate around the world,
maybe through multinational
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companies. But you're starting
to see some other countries— UK, the Commonwealth countries,
especially— following the US
00:14:05
path on some of these things,
which is not always great. But not all countries are. Like
India, for example, never copy
00:14:11
the US. They were closer to
copying Japan than the US. And it's a country that takes
managing people very seriously.
00:14:20
And they've got enormous
challenges, right? They don't have education systems that are
near at the scale that they
00:14:26
need. They have diversity issues
that absolutely swamp what we see here. Religion, caste, you
know, nationality, language. And
00:14:35
so they have to take them
seriously. So I'm curious about this notion
of management and the under-
00:14:42
investment of management. So
Wharton, obviously, is a premier business school where we teach
management. Are we teaching it
00:14:50
the right way? Are there things
that we should be including in our syllabi and in the curricula
that we are not including, or
00:14:56
things that are outdated that
we're doing? What would your advice be? Yeah. So funny story about
this. We have a case that we
00:15:03
teach on purpose every year.
We've been teaching it for a long time. And it's a case about
an investment bank and about the
00:15:10
associates. Junior people in
investment banks, you know. And they're often in bullpens in the
middle of the— you know, the
00:15:17
building, and the managers are
around the outside with window suites. And the people in the
middle get these tasks sort of
00:15:23
dropped on them at the last minute.
They don't know what's going on. They're working crazy hours.
00:15:27
And then we ask people
in the room, you know, "Does this look like what
you've been doing?" And they say,
00:15:31
"Yeah, yeah, yeah." And then we
tell them the case was written in 1973. Right? So we've had
generations of managers go
00:15:40
through, right, and they go off to
Wall Street. They know this is crazy, and yet, for some reason,
it persists. And I think part of
00:15:48
the problem, which we don't
quite understand, I think sometimes, is how much our
students, when they come to us,
00:15:58
have already got very strong
ideas about things. And there are things they pay attention to
and things that they don't. And
00:16:07
they pick those up from what's
going on in the business community around them by the
time they— when they get here,
00:16:13
right? And it's hard to get them
off of those things, right? So that's— I don't think we're
teaching the wrong things. I
00:16:19
don't think that's right.
Getting their attention is another problem. Well, increasingly now with— I
mean, we are officially in the
00:16:26
age of having a digital native
generation entering the workforce. And the ability
to maintain focus and attention
00:16:36
is a whole other— whole
other issue. So you have spent a number of years also focused on
women and women's issues in the
00:16:46
workplace. What can you
share with us about what drove that interest for you? Well, I think I wrote about a
lot of groups that were sort of
00:16:57
disadvantaged in the workplace
a little bit. Maybe before we get to the women, one that I think I
really had some influence —
00:17:06
it turned out, in a small way that's
really mattered was the world of people with disabilities. And
with the Office of Disability
00:17:14
Employment in the Department of
Labor. And they were persuaded that the problem they had with
employers was not being able to
00:17:22
show the ROI on hiring disabled
workers. And I pointed out to the people, you know, in the
department and elsewhere, you
00:17:32
know, think about the struggles
that women had getting into the workforce and then getting up
into leadership positions. Do
00:17:40
you think any of that had to do
with ROI problems? You think the problem was they couldn't show
an ROI as to why you should hire
00:17:46
minorities? "No, no, it wasn't
any of that." Well, so why do you think that's what's going on
here? The problem with
00:17:52
disability is that people are
uncomfortable around those who have disabilities, because they
feel if this happened to me, I
00:18:01
would feel terrible, if I lost a
limb. And they assume the people they're talking to who have
disabilities feel like that. And
00:18:10
they don't, right? Somebody who's
lost a limb lost it 20 years ago, right? They're over it.
They're dealing with it. They're
00:18:16
fine, right? So don't assume
that, you know, they're miserable, right, because of
that. That that's the problem.
00:18:23
It wasn't— nothing to do with
ROI, right? I think with respect to women, I think, you
know, it's similar kinds of
00:18:31
issues. Had nothing to do with
ROI, right? It just had to do with discrimination in various
kinds of forms. One of the
00:18:38
things that we were
showing, actually was about some of the progress that women have
made in the managerial and
00:18:44
executive ranks, right? And
there were at least some moments where employers were giving
women a push to try to advance
00:18:52
them faster than you might
otherwise expect, right? So that was kind of encouraging, and it
does show that you could make it
00:18:59
happen faster if you wanted,
right? Wasn't really pipeline problems or other things, right?
00:19:04
So I want to ask a more personal
question, because I think your previous answer surfaced this.
Early in your career, you were
00:19:14
diagnosed with chronic fatigue
syndrome. So I don't know if that's considered a disability
of sorts, but it's certainly
00:19:19
something that you needed to
navigate as a professional, and I'm wondering how you did
that, and what influence that
00:19:30
may have had in your thinking
about some of the research that you've pursued in this regard.
00:19:35
Yeah, you know, it's a quirky
illness, and some people get over it reasonably quickly. For
me, it was 20 years, which was
00:19:43
not fun. You know, Somerset
Maugham, the novelist, began his career as a doctor. And he
said, observing patients, that
00:19:52
there was really no benefit to
being sick, you didn't get stronger. Suffering didn't make
you better. You know, it was
00:19:58
really nothing useful to it. I
think, in terms of what I learned was things that
everybody who's successful
00:20:07
knows, you know. And that
is, if you actually take time off to get better, you will pay
a price for that, right? You'll
00:20:16
pay a price in opportunities
that you're going to be passed over because of that.
And—
00:20:22
Are you saying that as a
perception or as a reality? No that's the reality, I think, right?
00:20:26
And so I can think
about my own experience here, for example,
when I sort of first had this,
00:20:32
and I had the opportunity to
work for the Secretary of Labor, because she was a WEMBA student,
Ann McLaughlin, then. And then
00:20:40
that's gonna be in addition to
all your other work. You're gonna do that or not? Well, I
did it, and because I did that,
00:20:46
then I got this opportunity to
run a research center for the Department of Education, which
we did with my colleague Bob
00:20:51
Zemsky here for 10 years. And
because I did that, I got the opportunity to be the senior
advisor to the Crown Prince of
00:20:59
Bahrain. And, you know, these
things all— if you miss them at the beginning of your career,
you know, they don't necessarily
00:21:06
come back. I think it probably
cost me a lot in terms of how long it took to get over this
thing, you know. So you pay,
00:21:15
unfortunately, you do pay a
price for these things, right? But it is, unfortunately, a
really difficult Faustian
00:21:23
choice, you know, to make. I
think I was fortunate in many ways. I didn't pay a career
price much for this, really. But
00:21:33
you know, you learn how to
fake it, right? You learn how to cut out of the reception part of
programs. You learn to come in
00:21:44
the night before so you can get
more sleep. You know, you learn to go lay down between classes.
And, you know, you find ways to
00:21:51
fake it, which are their own
skill. And I think that is kind of how I got through it. I don't
know that it had a profound
00:22:01
effect on thinking about, you
know, these other research topics. I think I am more
motivated, maybe, by— than many
00:22:09
people— by things that irritate
me. You know, many people say they're motivated by things they
love, but there are many things
00:22:18
that I've written really because
I found them irritating. You know, like a book about older
workers was, you know, there's
00:22:25
enormous discrimination against
older workers based on assumptions about them, all of
which are wrong. You know, like
00:22:34
their job performance is worse.
It's actually better. Absenteeism is actually better,
turnover is actually lower.
00:22:41
There's all kinds of myths,
right? So I think I've been motivated more by those things
that, you know, I just think
00:22:48
were wrong and irritating. And
I wanted to say it. You know. I don't know if you give this
advice to people too, but I tell
00:22:55
them, if they're interested in an
academic career, do you feel that there's something you want
to say and do you feel better once
00:23:03
you have said it? If you think
that the goal here is to say it, and then people— your phone will
ring and stuff, you know?
00:23:12
Doesn't happen.
- Very, very, very— Very rarely.
So it ought to feel good to you
00:23:17
to say it. And if it doesn't, you're probably in the wrong
line of work.
00:23:20
So let's talk about your time at
Wharton. - Okay. You've been here
for how long?
00:23:24
40 years.
- 40 years. I told that
to my undergraduate class, and they just started applauding.
Like, you know, "Look, he's still
00:23:31
standing. Isn't that cute? He
can move and everything," you know. Yeah. So.
Yeah, 40 years.
00:23:37
So you have seen a lot of things
at this institution and just in in the world. How have
our students changed over those
00:23:46
40 years? I mean, mainly, I would say, in
good ways. Their academic abilities are better. One of the
things that was quite clear is
00:23:55
their writing got better. Their
ability to write was much better. I think there was kind
of a— you know, the thing about
00:24:03
students is that they are on the
crest of whatever wave is happening in society,
particularly with employers,
00:24:11
right? So employers want to
change direction. Easiest to do it by who you hire, right? And
the job market is tight. You
00:24:19
notice it most if you're at the
entry level. The job market goes soft, you notice it most if
you're trying to leave. So they
00:24:28
get yanked around by the market
and society more than people who are in their midlife, right? So
I think in terms of the
00:24:37
students, they haven't changed
that much. The 1980s, the students were a little
difficult, because it was the
00:24:44
peak of the finance wave, and it
was just heady, you know? They were able to make so much money
so quickly. And— unprecedented,
00:24:53
right? And that just completely
captured them. And they were not happy to be doing anything that
wasn't showing them how to make
00:25:02
money right now, and I'd like to
get out of here, you know, and start cashing in, right? But I'd
say after that, they
00:25:08
haven't changed that much. But
the world around them changes, and as a result, you know,
whenever the labor market gets
00:25:16
tight, we hear employers
complaining that our students, you know, are difficult and they
have unrealistic expectations,
00:25:24
you know. And it happens, you
know, every 10 years or so. They don't change.
00:25:29
I want to bring this to a close
shortly, but I have two more questions, one of which is,
higher education is going
00:25:35
through a very tumultuous period
right now. And so as an organizational scholar, as
someone who understands labor
00:25:45
and labor markets and employee
dynamics and all of those issues, how should we be
thinking about the management of
00:25:53
change through this period of
tumult? And what advice, what counsel would you have for
leaders of
00:25:59
higher education institutions? Yeah. So, I think three points.
One is just to remember that
00:26:04
higher education in the US is
largely a public university story, right? 80, 85% of
students go to school in public
00:26:12
universities. And the big thing
that has changed there is that it used to be— so, I began my
career at University of Illinois.
00:26:21
Wasn't there long, but a couple
years. And Illinois largely loved the University of Illinois, and
the view among people there was,
00:26:29
if your kid got in there, your
career was set. And I think what has happened in the last two
generations or so is, we've so
00:26:39
expanded higher education, and
when you add an extra college graduate, you don't add an extra
college job, right? And we've
00:26:47
tended to add more capacity,
frankly, at the lower end of the distribution, in the sense of
schools that have fewer
00:26:55
resources, students who are not
able to have residential experiences. It's just a
different experience. And
00:27:03
families discovered that their
kids were graduating and could not get a college job, the kind
that was going to give you a
00:27:10
career. And that led to
considerable dissatisfaction with the whole college
experience, right, and the whole
00:27:18
concern about whether it will
pay off for people or not. So I think that's the big political
change. I think the second issue
00:27:28
is about management, something
that you obviously see. So we used to run an executive ed
program here for higher
00:27:35
education. We had 100 colleges
and universities go through it. And early on, they didn't
understand that there were
00:27:44
markets they were competing in
with each other, but they got that pretty soon. The second
thing they didn't understand was
00:27:50
strategy. That you can't all, as a
university, be Harvard or Penn. You can't all, as a college, be
Amherst or Swarthmore, right?
00:27:58
There were niches. You had to
figure out your strategies. They kind of got that. What they
never quite got their hands
00:28:03
around was that management
mattered. You know? That understanding how to manage
change mattered, understanding
00:28:11
how to deal with uncertainty
really matters. And we're still struggling with that, right? And
if you look at— as one of my
00:28:18
colleagues in education said, if
you really want to be a university president, be a
classicist and take one course
00:28:23
in accounting. The path is set
for you, right? But they're suspicious— the rest of higher ed is
suspicious of business schools
00:28:31
and management, right? So it
doesn't get up there. I think the third point, where we're in
this year, in the last year or
00:28:37
so, is that, you know, we have
to recognize that we have groups that really don't like us for
reasons which might not be good.
00:28:47
And traditionally, we have laid
back, you know, and just let things pass. But if you let your
opponents define you, then you
00:28:56
really have a problem. And I
think that's what's happening now. We were visiting a company,
a colleague and I here, we were
00:29:04
doing some research at. And one
of the guys there, who was a very conservative guy, at the end of
our program, said, you know,
00:29:09
"Gee, you guys really surprised
me. You're not weird." And I said, "What do you mean?" "You
know, all politically correct
00:29:17
and all this sort of stuff." So,
"What do you think goes on at universities? You know, like our
campus, 3000 faculty, half of
00:29:25
them are in medical school. What
do you think they're studying there? They're trying to save
your life, you know." And I think
00:29:31
we've allowed them to define us.
And we can't do that, you know. We have to define ourselves to
this broader community. We can't
00:29:40
take it for granted anymore. Thank you for sharing that. Last
question. Given all that you've
00:29:46
learned in your career, what
would be your biggest piece of advice for someone entering the
workforce today?
00:29:52
I think it ties back to things
we were talking about earlier, and that is, you can tell pretty
quickly from an employer whether
00:29:59
they think that their
employees are an asset or a liability, right? And you
probably are not going to have a
00:30:08
good time for long in a place
where they see employees as a liability, right? So you know,
if you pass through those
00:30:15
places, that's fine. You're
probably not going to stay long and be happy, but you could
figure that out pretty easily
00:30:22
these days as to how they're
going to manage and treat you, right? And you want to be in a
place where they
00:30:27
think you matter. So assessing culture and the fit of the culture
with your own values.
00:30:32
Yeah. And you can see that by
how they treat people and what their priorities are. Pretty
easy to tell.
00:30:40
Peter, thank you so much. Well, thank you. This
was fun. - Likewise.