Direct and Indirect Complementarity between Workplace Reorganization and New Technology

We link survey and balance sheet data to investigate the extent of complementarity between the introduction of new technology and changes in workplace practices. Across all firms, we find that new technology is complementary with higher work intensity. Similarly, changes in work techniques yield diffuse complementarity gains, particularly in firms undergoing extensive restructuring. Changes in work organization yield, on average, complementarity gains in terms of productivity growth. Substitutability between new technology and specific workplace changes is sometimes found, consistently with the presence of costs associated to learning functions or resistance to changes.workplace practices, ICT investments, complementarity.

Education, Informal Learning and Development of Key Competencies in Workplaces : the Importance of Organizational Design

The objective of the study is to test the hypothesis that growth in a worker’s competency level is affected by a number of educational, training and workplace features. The focus is on the expressed competencies. Our findings show the strong statistical significance of five variables corcerning organizational nature of the workplaces, whereby employees: (i) have participated in improvement groups; (ii) have submitted improvement suggestions; (iii) have been interviewed for performance evaluation purposes; (iv) receive constant information flows; and (v) are involved and consulted by the organization. The cross-sectional nature of the estimates raises typical questions concerning: (a) the endogeneity of some variables; (b) the problem of selection bias with respect to certain variables and, lastly, (c) the heterogeneity issue. These problems are addressed by using the following test procedures: (1) the introduction of variables related to personality traits to capture individual fixed effects on the organizational variables, as well as the use of a two-stage procedure (TSLS) to control for the endogeneity of employee tenure; and (2) the use of the White method of robust standard error to control for the heterogeneity of the residuals. The selection bias issue is examined in argumentative form, as there was no information in the database that would make it possible to deal with it in econometric form. However, the relevance of the hypothesis is borne out by the outcome. The policy recommendations that can be derived include the implementation of: (A) employee-management agreements to redesign workplaces in accordance with the findings of the study; (B) public policies designed to encourage the re-engineering of workplaces in line with the processes under way in the main countries of Central and Northern Europe.training, learning, job design, organizational behaviours

Direct and indirect complementarity between workplace practices and new technology

We link survey and balance sheet data to investigate the extent of complementarity between the introduction of new technology and changes in workplace practices. Across all firms, we find that new technology is complementary with higher work intensity. Similarly, changes in work techniques yield diffuse complementarity gains, particularly in firms undergoing extensive restructuring. Changes in work organization yield, on average, complementarity gains in terms of productivity growth. Substitutability between new technology and specific workplace changes is sometimes found, consistently with the presence of costs associated to learning functions or resistance to changes

Dynamic organisational capabilities: a unifying framework for new work practices, product innovation and competences formation

Job, workplace and human resource management (HRM) designs are nowadays at the centre of great attention in economic analysis. New work practices are becoming the cornerstone of an approach to flexibility from within the firm which is credited with a significant contribution to sustainable productivity growth. Building on recent empirical evidence such results, we develop a framework that embeds all the main findings and shows how dynamic organisational capabilities are cumulative and endogenously created, according to a typical path-(inter)dependency process. Policy implications in term of diffusion of workplaces reengineering and new work practices are also derived

Dynamic Organizational Capabilities: A Unifying Framework for New Work Practices, Product Innovation and Competences Formation

Job, workplace and human resource management (HRM) designs are nowadays at the centre of great attention in economic analysis. New work practices are becoming the cornerstone of an approach to flexibility from within the firm which is credited with a significant contribution to sustainable productivity growth. Building on recent empirical evidence, we develop a 243 framework that embeds all the main findings and shows how dynamic organizational capabilities are cumulative and endogenously created, according to a typical path-(inter)dependency process. Policy implications in term of diffusion of workplaces reengineering and new work practices are also derived.

Flat Hierarchical Structure, Bundles of New Work Practices and Firm Performance

In the last decade a growing economic literature has been devoted to the relationship between firm organisation and performance. Empirical analyses mainly focus on the relationship between human resources management and firm performance, neglecting the role played by organisational designs. The aim of this paper is to integrate the analysis of this relationship and verify the extent to which it is relevant for Italian firms. The data set, for a sample of manufacturing firms located in Lombardy, is composed of a cross-section survey information on workplace organisation and a balance sheet panel. We confirm the major results of studies carried out in other countries, namely: practices appear in clusters, have positive effects on productivity and are favoured by high skills. Moreover we find that a flat hierarchical structure is a condition "sine qua non" for some practices to be implemented and become productive; however, practices like the degree of autonomy of the team, consultation, information sharing, selective hiring and cognitive training are productive only if the horizontal structure is accompanied by good industrial relations. The latter appears to be one of the complementary conditions for radical reorganisation leading to a flat structure and a consequent empowerment of human resources. The road of internal firm flexibility appears to be a strong source of productivity, able to fully exploit the potential of new, more complex and versatile equipments based on investments in advanced manufacturing and in the so-called "general purpose technologies". Policy implications in terms of diffusion of workplaces re-engineering are derived and discussed.

Dynamic Organisational Capabilities: a Unifying Framework for New Work Practices, Product Innovation and Competences Formation

Job, workplace and human resource management (HRM) designs are nowadays at the centre of a great attention in economic analysis. New work practices are becoming the cornerstone of an internal firm flexibility approach, which is pointed out as a significant contributor to sustainable productivity growth. In the last decade a growing economic literature has concentrated mainly on the relationship between firm organisation and performance, establishing a causal link both at the theoretical and the empirical level. Other links, like that with product innovation and competences development, have been more neglected. However recent empirical evidence is throwing new light on these latter relationships. Building on such results, we develop a framework that embeds all the main findings and shows how the dynamic organisational capabilities are progressively cumulative and endogenously created, according to a typical path-(inter)dependency process among four poles of the mentioned links. Policy implications in term of diffusion of new workplace practices are also derived

I forni dell’età del Ferro di Montecastello: strutture per il trattamento di prodotti alimentari?

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