NBC News
Logistics companies are competing with Amazon for a tight supply of warehouse and distribution workers, and the online retailer is able to offer starting wages that exceed the market rate. “It proves difficult to woo that workforce,” said Thomas Goldsby, a professor of logistics at the University of Tennessee. Rapid test makers face the additional challenge of trying to forecast whether a massive capital investment for the capacity for sorely needed rapid tests will still pay off in eight years — or even eight months. “Those who 'figure this out' appear to be the smartest kids in class, but it’s really a game of chance,” Goldsby said. “No one wants to be left holding massive inventories when the music stops.”
Thomas Goldsby - Dee & Jimmy Haslam Chair of Supply Chain, David P. Perrot Supply Chain Management Faculty Fellow
Wall Street Journal
“Employers don’t want to lay off somebody who might in some way be productive,” said Marianne Wanamaker, an economist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Marianne Wanamaker - Professor of Economics and Dean of the Baker School of Public Policy and Public Affairs
Forbes
“It is difficult to get the shipment of raw goods from other parts of the world because of COVID and shortages of shipping containers and delays in the shipping industry,” said Andrea Sordi, academic director for the executive MBA in global supply chain management at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. “Adding on to that, the world had a huge increase in their consumption. With lockdowns, people were not going to restaurants and eating out. There has been a huge increase in demand of ready-to-eat and pickup food.”
Andrea Sordi - Clinical Assistant Professor
Supply Chain Dive
"It’s still a male-dominated industry. I can’t tell you how many times when I’ve been in meetings and I’m the only woman," said Wendy Tate, professor of supply chain management at the University of Tennessee, who also works with Nexxus Initiative — a campus group that empowers women in supply chain. "I think companies are making really good strides in looking around and saying 'oh we made a mistake.'"
Wendy Tate - McCormick Professor of Supply Chain Management, Ray & Joan Myatt Faculty Fellow
The Washington Post
“People left the labor market in droves during the pandemic and they’re not coming back,” said economist Marianne Wanamaker, a University of Tennessee professor, noting that the country’s labor force participation rate has been stagnant at 61 percent. “We are way behind the predicted employment recovery.”
Marianne Wanamaker - Professor of Economics and Dean of the Baker School of Public Policy and Public Affairs
Salon
Thomas Goldsby, a professor of supply chain management at the University of Tennessee — Knoxville's Haslam College of Business, assigns his undergraduate student a "routine exercise" that frequently proves revelatory. Its purpose is to illustrate the complexity of the various trade routes that bring products from all over the world to consumers. The assignment is to figure out how far the students can trace the supply chain — if possible going back to the exact point when the raw materials were extracted. "When my students have had an opportunity to present their results to the companies and the products that they produce, the company executives learn something every time," Goldsby told Salon. "I just think it's remarkable that my undergraduate students can present news about the business or the products and the senior executives are like, 'Wow, we had no idea that a golf club manufacturer is wondering why they have a hard time getting titanium.' It's because there's not a lot of titanium that goes into a golf club, but there's a whole heck of a lot of it that goes into an aircraft to build the fuselage."
Thomas Goldsby - Dee & Jimmy Haslam Chair of Supply Chain, David P. Perrot Supply Chain Management Faculty Fellow
Adweek
“Agility provides degrees of freedom—the ability to pivot away from bad situations and toward good ones,” Tom Goldsby, co-faculty director of the University of Tennessee’s Global Supply Chain Institute, told Adweek. “That was something of a luxury before the pandemic, but it’s a vital form of business resilience now.”
Thomas Goldsby - Dee & Jimmy Haslam Chair of Supply Chain, David P. Perrot Supply Chain Management Faculty Fellow
POLITICO
“For each of us, the way that we think about our own health, and the way we want to interact with other people and how often we want to be in the office, and whether we do or don't want to be wearing masks around people who are unvaccinated, those elements of our preferences are important for our job match,” said Marianne Wanamaker, an economics professor at the University of Tennessee and former member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
Marianne Wanamaker - Professor of Economics and Dean of the Baker School of Public Policy and Public Affairs
The New York Times
Celeste Carruthers, a professor at the University of Tennessee’s Haslam College of Business who has extensively researched the state’s tuition-free programs, said Tennessee had done several things right. The first was keeping the program simple. “The crystal-clear message that college is free if you follow these steps and go to these places cuts through a lot of the clutter and opaqueness,” Dr. Carruthers said.
Celeste Carruthers - William F. Fox Distinguished Professor of Labor Economics
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