MIT Sloan Management Review Research Report on Orchestrating Workforce Ecosystems

Confronting the challenges of intentionally leading and coordinating workforce ecosystems — what we call orchestrating workforce ecosystems — is at the heart of this report. This issue is especially timely given the ongoing workforce shifts brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, shifting worker preferences, and the changing nature of work.

This year’s research shows that orchestrating a workforce ecosystem is a multifaceted effort that involves integration among many business functions. In mature legacy organizations in particular, we see companies changing basic management practices around how they access, engage, and develop workers; we see leaders adapting to a changing workforce where they have more contributors but less control. In some cases, we see upwards of 30%-50% of an organization composed of contingent workers, and organizations increasingly relying on third parties to deliver some of their most essential services. With laws preventing traditional performance management for contingent workers, and with companies increasingly relying on arms-length contracting for critical services, some leaders have limited management options with a large percentage of their workers. We see executives often struggling to deal with a range of cultural issues as well: How far should they go to include external contributors in existing corporate culture? To what extent do diversity, equity, and inclusion principles and practices apply to external workers

About the Author

Elizabeth J. Altman (@lizaltman) is an assistant professor of management at the Manning School of Business at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and guest editor for the MIT Sloan Management Review Future of the Workforce Big Ideas research initiative. Altman has been a visiting scholar at Harvard Business School and visiting professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Her research focuses on business ecosystems, platform businesses, strategy, innovation, organizational change, and future-of-work topics.

David Kiron is the editorial director of MIT Sloan Management Review and program lead for its Big Ideas research initiatives. Previously, he was a senior researcher at Harvard Business School and a research associate at the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University. He is coeditor of two books, Human Well-Being and Economic Goals (Island Press, 1997) and The Consumer Society (Island Press, 1997), and coauthor of more than 100 articles, research reports, and case studies.

Robin Jones is a principal at Deloitte Consulting LLP with more than 20 years of organization and workforce transformation consulting experience. At Deloitte, Jones leads markets and services for Workforce Transformation, where she advises senior executives on strategy and execution of large-scale future-of-work initiatives.

Jeff Schwartz is a senior adviser on the future of work and a retired senior principal at Deloitte Consulting LLP, where he was a cofounder and leader of the U.S. Future of Work practice. He is the vice president of Insights and Impact at Gloat, the world’s leader in talent marketplaces, and a visiting professor at Columbia Business School. He is the author of Work Disrupted (Wiley, 2021) and has been the global editor of Deloitte’s “Global Human Capital Trends Report” since its launch in 2011.

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