GLOBAL CONNECTIONS AND THE STRUCTURE OF SKILLS IN LOCAL CO-WORKER NETWORKS

Laszlo Lorincz, Guilherme Chihaya, Anikó Hannák, Dávid Takács, Balázs Lengyel and Rikard Eriksson
Additional contact information
Anikó Hannák: Department of Information Science, University of Zurich
Dávid Takács: Department of Geography, Umea University
Rikard Eriksson: Department of Geography, Umea University; Center for Regional Science, Umea University

No 2034, CERS-IE WORKING PAPERS from Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies

Abstract: Social connections that reach distant places are advantageous for individuals and firms by providing access to new skills and knowledge. However, systematic evidence on how firms work up global knowledge access is still missing. In this paper, we analyse how global work connections relate to differences in the skill composition of employees within companies. We gather survey data from 10% of workers in a local industry in Sweden and complement this with digital trace data to map co-worker networks and skill composition. This unique combination of data and features allows us to quantify global connections of employees and measure the degree of skill-similarity and skill-relatedness to co-workers. We find that the workers with extensive local networks typically have related skills to others in the region and to their co-workers. Workers with more global ties typically bring in less related skills to the region. These results provide new insights to the composition of skills within knowledge intensive firms by connecting the geography of networks contacts to the diversity of skills accessible through them.

Keywords: Co-worker networks; skills; relatedness; global connections; survey; online social network (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D85 J24 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2020-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-int, nep-lab, nep-tid and nep-ure
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:has:discpr:2034

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