IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpm/cepmap/9917.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Skill biased organizational change? Evidence from a panel of British and French establishments

Author

Listed:
  • Caroli, Eve
  • Van Reenen, John

Abstract

In this paper we investigate evidence for the "skill bias" of organizational change (OC). These include the decentralization of authority, delayering of managerial functions and increased multi-tasking. We use several sources of panel data on British and French establishments. Three findings emerge: (i) organizational change tends to reduce the demand for unskilled workers in both countries; (ii) OC is retarded by increases in regional skill price differentials (a measure of the relative supply of skill); (iii) OC leads to greater productivity increases in establishments with larger initial skill endowments. We argue that OC, technology and human capital are complementary assets of the modern enterprise. The widespread introduction of new organizational forms may be an important factor in the declining demand for less skilled workers in OECD countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Caroli, Eve & Van Reenen, John, 1999. "Skill biased organizational change? Evidence from a panel of British and French establishments," CEPREMAP Working Papers (Couverture Orange) 9917, CEPREMAP.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpm:cepmap:9917
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cepremap.fr/depot/couv_orange/co9917.ps
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.cepremap.fr/depot/couv_orange/co9917.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L2 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior
    • J3 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs
    • O3 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpm:cepmap:9917. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sébastien Villemot (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ceprefr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.