AT&T Company Profile Paper 1

AT&T Company Profile Paper

Sarah Reinhardt

Arizona State University

AT&T Company Profile Paper 2

The company that I have chosen to profile for my final paper is AT&T. I chose

AT&T for multiple reasons including the fact that I worked for them for a period as a

contract employee, I have my cellular service with them, and they have a large presence

in my city, Atlanta, Georgia. AT&T is a large telecommunications organization

headquartered in Dallas, Texas. AT&T has approximately 270,000 plus employees

across the world providing services in 57 countries. AT&T has an interesting history of

mergers and acquisitions since their inception in 1885 including the merger that occurred

in the early 2000’s with SBC, resulting in the AT&T we know now. In this paper, I have

chosen to focus on the concepts of leadership, communication, and diversity at AT&T.

Leadership

The AT&T website documents that the company hierarchy is broken down into

different functional areas with a senior executive sitting at the top of each area. Some of

the different functional areas that are headed by an executive are technology and

operations, business solutions and international business. The executives all report

directly to the CEO of the company. In addition to the executive structure there is also a

company board with 13 current members that assist with corporate governance. AT&T

follows a classical organization structure based on the hierarchy that I mentioned above,

which is detailed on their website. This hierarchical structure meets the six different

principles defined by Fayol in his theory of classical management including the unity of

command principle which “proposes that that an employee should receive orders

regarding a particular task from only one supervisor” (pg. 20).

While AT&T appears to follow a classical management structure there is strong

evidence that they focus some effort on their employee’s thoughts, feelings, and making
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the workplace inclusive for all individuals. In addition to this inclusive behavior, AT&T

also focuses a great deal on learning by providing extensive employee training and a

leadership intern program. Per Harvard Business School Publishing, AT&T created a

comprehensive training program that “promoted a common culture and focused on

pivotal capabilities such as innovation, collaboration, and customer centricity”. These are

important aspects of human resources organizations which try to “maximize the

contribution of employees, both individually and collectively” (pg. 54).

Communication

In addition to the classical scalar chain mentioned above, AT&T has corporate

governance guidelines, and a code of ethics, among many other items, that are available

to the public on their website. These are examples of formal communication within the

organization. AT&T also communicates less formally through several blogs on their

website. These blogs focus on a range of topics from disaster recovery efforts in

Tennessee during a recent wild fire to a piece on “corporate speak” and “jargon”. They

have even included a thank you note to customers! This blog is an interesting method of

communication that is less formal and is being leveraged to speak to a large audience on

an emotional level.

Another communication stream within AT&T is it’s many contact centers that are

used to facilitate customer service for clients, partners, and employees. Contact center

employees are front-line employees who will “display certain feelings to satisfy

organizational role expectations” (pg. 200) which is otherwise known as emotional labor.

This expression of emotional labor could occur in several formats in today’s contact
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center: instant messages, emails, or the more traditional phone call. Having worked in

the contact center space for nearly 15 years I can attest that contact centers are rife with

emotion but very little emotional intelligence or emotional intelligence training for team

members or management. The goal of a contact center is to handle as many “contacts”

and meet “high performance metrics and rigid call schedules” (Sinha, 2015). Emotional

exhaustion or being “fatigued, frustrated, used up, or unable to face another day on the

job” (pg. 207) is common place in the contact center industry. As a matter of fact, I

would agree with the person in this article who works for AT&T and says “three-quarters

of my call center is on antidepressants and anti-anxiety medicine just to deal with the

company.” (Lieber, 2016). With all this communication through their website and

contact centers, AT&T’s overall communication with their customer’s is very poor and

that is visible in a multitude of articles on the web. As Lieber mentioned “Unlike most

prominent U.S. companies that have launched customer service initiatives in the past

decade to solve consumer complaints, AT&T, judging by my mail, stays the same or gets

worse.”. It seems there is also a lack of internal communication or training to effectuate

the move to a more customer centric position.

Diversity

AT&T has a strong commitment to diversity which they illustrate by using the

phrase “Every Voice Matters” which is documented in their Annual Diversity report.

They have created many programs or affinity groups that cater to employees including

LGBTQ, women, and many others. On the AT&T website there are statistics listed to

support their overall diversity such as: 33% of the AT&T workforce is female and 42%

of the overall workforce are people of color. In fact, “AT&T's representation of

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Hispanics and African-Americans stands at 13 and 19 percent, respectively — figures

that are close to or exceed both group's representation in the overall U.S. population.”

(Rodriguez, 2016). AT&T is not doing as great of a job for women since women make

up “only a 35 percent representation” (Rodriguez, 2016) of their workforce. The Chief

Diversity Officer at AT&T is an African-American woman. I wanted to find recent

statistics on women, specifically African-American women, at the C-level in major U.S.

companies but I could not find anything that was recent and reliable. It stands to reason

though that if “less than 3% of the top executives in Fortune 500 companies are women”

(pg. 219) that the percentage of those women that are African-American is quite small.

Randall Stephenson, the CEO of AT&T, comes from a classical management

background with a focus on finance however he has shown very progressive human

relations management strategies throughout his career and has recently been in the news

for his strong stance in favor of the black lives matter movement. Mr. Stephenson has

“called for immigration reform, including revamping the visa system and offering a path

for undocumented workers to gain citizenship” (Gryta, 2016).

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Summary

AT&T has been around in some form or other for a long time. They have seen

the evolution of the telephone from the beginning! They have had to pivot with many

technology changes over the years and they are continuing their work on achieving the

next level in more ways than just technology. AT&T does exhibit a classic hierarchy

and formal communication process that might lead one to believe they follow a classic

management structure. I feel like they are trying to make changes to allow themselves to

be a technology company that focuses on culture, but they are struggling with that

change. I thought that I would see more articles on thought leadership surrounding

culture, technology, or even overall leadership from AT&T or its leadership.

Based on everything I have read on the diversity at AT&T I believe this may be

the one area that I have discussed where AT&T is truly excelling. I believe AT&T has

reached the level of a multicultural organization with their holistic view and focus on

diversity. I think that speaks volumes for where the company could be going in the

future.
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References

AT&T Executive leadership information. Retrieved from

http://www.att.com/gen/investor-relations?pid=5711

Annual Diversity Information. Retrieved from

http://about.att.com/content/dam/sitesdocs/2015_Diversity_By_The_Numbers.pdf

Rodriguez, S. (2016, January 14). AT&T Chief Diversity Officer: Diversity Key To Company’s

Profitability.

Retrieved from http://www.ibtimes.com/att-chief-diversity-officer-diversity-key-

companys-profitability-2262543

Lieber, D. (2016, February 4). Watchdog: When will AT&T get the picture? Retrieved from

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2016/02/04/watchdog-when-will-att-get-the-

picture

Develop Your Leaders, Transform Your Organization. Harvard Business School Publishing.

Retrieved from

http://www.harvardbusiness.org/sites/default/files/16843_CL_Whitepaper_Transform_Or

ganization_0.pdf?trk=profile_certification_title

Sinha, S. (2015, September 8). 10 Reasons behind Call Center Agent Burnout Retrieved from

http://www.ameyo.com/blog/10-reasons-behind-call-center-agent-burnout

Gryta, T. (2016, October 30). Meet America’s Least Likely Media Mogul: AT&T Boss Randall

Stephenson. Retrieved from

http://www.wsj.com/articles/meet-americas-least-likely-media-mogul-at-t-boss-randall-

stephenson-1477738801
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Miller, K. (2012). Organizational communication:  Approaches and processes (6th ed.). 

Boston:  Wadsworth Cengage Learning.