Relational Skills and Corporate Productivity in a Comparative Size Class Perspective

Leonardo Becchetti, Sara Mancini () and Nazaria Solferino ()
Additional contact information
Sara Mancini: University of Rome "Tor Vergata", http://www.ceistorvergata.it
Nazaria Solferino: Università della Calabria

No 557, CEIS Research Paper from Tor Vergata University, CEIS

Abstract: Based on results from the different fields of the game theoretic literature on strategic interactions and social dilemmas, gift exchange and procedural utility, we argue that corporate social responsibility and relational skills i) with other firms; ii) between employers and workers iii) among workers and iv) with stakeholders are associated to positive effects on productivity. We test our research hypothesis in a comparative perspective on small, medium and large sized Italian firms. We find that size matters when investigating the impact of relational skills on added value per worker after controlling for relevant concurring factors. The identified significant skill related components are: i) corporate policies considering strategic workers’ wellbeing; ii) team working attitudes considered as priority soft skills when hiring workers; iii) initiatives in favour of the productive network operating in the same local area; iv) involvement of stakeholders in CSR projects. Our findings show that the fourth component (stakeholder involvement) is positive and significant for all (small, medium and large) size classes, while the first (workers wellbeing) for small and medium firms, the second (team working) applies mainly to medium firms, and the third (initiative for the local productive network) to medium and large firms. Instrumental variable estimates on the relational skill principal component suggest that a causality link exists beyond these significant correlations. Our conclusion is that scale has an inverse U-shaped effect on the impact of team skills, weakens the impact of gift exchange mechanisms, while it reinforces those of investment in the local productive environment on added value per worker

Keywords: social dilemma; gift exchange; procedural utility; corporate social responsibility; corporate size (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2023-05-29, Revised 2023-05-29
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-eff, nep-eur, nep-hap, nep-hrm and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ceistorvergata.it/RePEc/rpaper/RP557.pdf Main text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rtv:ceisrp:557

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
CEIS - Centre for Economic and International Studies - Faculty of Economics - University of Rome "Tor Vergata" - Via Columbia, 2 00133 Roma
https://ceistorvergata.it

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEIS Research Paper from Tor Vergata University, CEIS CEIS - Centre for Economic and International Studies - Faculty of Economics - University of Rome "Tor Vergata" - Via Columbia, 2 00133 Roma. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Barbara Piazzi ().