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Technological and organizational changes as determinants of the skill bias: evidence from the Italian machinery industry
Author(s) -
Piva Mariacristina,
Santarelli Enrico,
Vivarelli Marco
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
managerial and decision economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.288
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1099-1468
pISSN - 0143-6570
DOI - 10.1002/mde.1246
Subject(s) - technological change , organizational change , empirical evidence , manufacturing sector , labour economics , economics , panel data , technical change , manufacturing , industrial organization , business , marketing , econometrics , public relations , economic growth , macroeconomics , productivity , political science , philosophy , epistemology
Recent empirical literature has introduced the ‘Skill Biased Organizational Change’ (SBOC) hypothesis, according to which organizational change can be considered as one of the main causes of the skill bias (increase in the number of highly skilled workers) exhibited by manufacturing employment in developed countries. This paper focuses on the importance of the SBOC with respect to the more traditional ‘Skill Biased Technological Change’ in driving the skill composition of workers in the Italian machinery sector. A dynamic panel data analysis is proposed which uses a unique firm‐level dataset. The results show that both skilled and unskilled workers are negatively affected by technological change, while organizational change—which in turn may be linked to new technologies—is positively linked to skilled workers. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.