Advanced Technologies and Worker Voice

Abstract

The interplay between labour institutions and firm-level adoption of new technologies such as robotics and other advanced digital tools remains poorly understood. Using a cross-sectional sample of more than 20,000 European establishments, we document a positive association between shop-floor employee representation (ER) and utilization of emerging technologies. We explore mechanisms driving this correlation by exploiting rich information on the role played by ER in relation to well-defined decision areas of management, such as work organization, dismissals, training and working time. In addition, we conduct a quantitative case study using a panel of Italian firms and exploiting size-contingent policy rules governing the operation of ER bodies in the context of a local-randomization regression discontinuity design. The analysis suggests a positive effect of ER on investments in advanced technologies around the firm size cut-off, although results are sensitive to type of technology and specification choices. We also document positive effects on training and process innovation, and no evidence of changes in composition of employment. Our findings cast doubt on the idea that ER discourages technology adoption. Rather, ER seems to influence workplace practices that enhance the complementarity between labour and new advanced technologies.

Contested Transparency: Digital Monitoring Technologies and Worker Voice

“…As a complementary exercise, we use a regression discontinuity design (RDD) exploiting size-contingent regulations governing the operation of ER at the workplace level in most EU countries. 16 We expect these workplace size thresholds provide some exogenous variation in the presence of employee representation, mitigating concerns about the endogenous formation of ER bodies (see Belloc et al (2023) for a similar approach). Given the the existence of multiple country-specific cutoffs, we normalize the running variable so that all workplaces face the same common cutoff value at zero (c = 0).…”

“…6 Firstly, we contribute to the relatively thin literature on how worker voice institutions shape the future of work by influencing the process of adoption and implementation of advanced technologies at the workplace level. In a series of related contributions, Belloc et al (2022) and Belloc et al (2023) show that workplace employee representation is associated with greater adoption of advanced technologies and favors job designs that reduce workers' exposure to automation, enhancing labour-technology complementarities. In the German context, characterized by a well-developed system of collective bargaining and employee representation in corporate decisions exists (Jäger et al, 2022), two recent studies show that workers exposed to automation receive additional training and transition to higher-skilled tasks within firms (Dauth et al, 2021;Battisti et al, 2023).…”