Coevolution of Job Automation Risk and Workplace Governance

Belloc, Filippo; Burdín, Gabriel; Cattani, Luca; Ellis, William Otoo; Landini, Fabio

doi:10.2139/ssrn.4114326

Cited by 5 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…A pair of studies using data from the European Company Survey provides suggestive support for the latter hypothesis. The first study shows that the presence of employee representation in an establishment is correlated with the adoption of more sophisticated and automation-resistant job designs (Belloc et al 2021). The second shows that codetermination is positively associated with take-up of advanced technologies, arguably because those technologies are complementary to workers' newly acquired sophisticated skills (Belloc, Burdín, and Landini 2022).…”

Section: F the Future Of Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Codetermination and Power in the Workplace

Jäger¹,

Noy²,

Schoefer³

2022

JLPE

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How does codetermination-entitling workers to participate in firm governance, either through membership on company boards or the formation of works councils-affect worker welfare and corporate decision-making? We critically discuss the history and contemporary operation of European codetermination arrangements and review empirical evidence on their effects on firms and workers. Our review suggests that these arrangements are unlikely to significantly shift power in the workplace, but may mildly improve worker welfare and firm performance, in part by boosting information-sharing and cooperation and in part by slightly increasing worker influence.

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Section: F the Future Of Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Codetermination and Power in the Workplace

Jäger¹,

Noy²,

Schoefer³

2022

JLPE

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“…Third, workplace governance systems based on ER can be complementary to rich job designs, reducing workers' exposure to job automation risk and enabling greater labour–technology complementarity (Belloc et al . 2022). This may in turn favour the selection of efficiency‐enhancing technologies, which at the same time improve working conditions 10…”

Section: Theoretical Mechanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Advanced Technologies and Worker Voice

2022

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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.

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“…3 In the same year, Pagano and Rowthorn (1994) showed the existence of a two-way relation between technology and property rights. Thereafter, a growing body of research applied the notion of organizational equilibrium to a variety of different domains, identifying interlocking complementarities within the domain of information production (Landini, 2013), between technology and finance (Nicita and Pagano, 2016), intellectual property rights and cognitive labor (Gürpinar, 2016), unionization and job-automation (Belloc et al, 2020) and, at a higher level of the economy, between ownership concentration and the emergence of systems of worker representation (Landini andPagano, 2018a, 2018b). The notion of organizational equilibrium has proven insightful to explain the emergence and persistence of different organizational forms that endure over time in spite of their inefficiency, and thus, that it can be used as a valid tool to formulate policy recommendations.…”

Section: Background Organizational Equilibriamentioning

confidence: 99%

Innovation, on-the-job learning, and labor contracts: an organizational equilibria approach

Dughera

Quatraro

Vittori

2021

Journal of Institutional Economics

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An established tenet of the literature is that the use of flexible labor leads to less innovation. Yet, less attention has been paid to the possibility that it is the decision to innovate that generates the incentive to hire on a permanent basis. The goal of this paper is to show the existence of interlocking complementarities between the firm's technological and hiring strategies. To do so, we develop a simple model where the workers’ decision to invest in human capital is affected by the type of employment contract (temporary versus permanent) and by the type of technological investments (routine versus innovative). When the firm is unable to coordinate its actions across these different domains, two equilibria simultaneously exist: in the ‘high-road’ equilibrium, firms invest more in innovative projects and hire on a permanent basis; in the ‘low-road’ equilibrium, they invest more in routine projects and hire on a temporary basis.

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Coevolution of Job Automation Risk and Workplace Governance

Cited by 5 publications

References 56 publications

Codetermination and Power in the Workplace

Codetermination and Power in the Workplace

Advanced Technologies and Worker Voice

Innovation, on-the-job learning, and labor contracts: an organizational equilibria approach

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