The role of proximity in retrospective: organizations, ICT and human resources in Italian traditional districts? firms

Paolo Seri

No 1404, Working Papers from University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Department of Economics, Society & Politics - Scientific Committee - L. Stefanini & G. Travaglini

Abstract: The existence of strong complementarities between ICT diffusion, investment in human capital and organizational innovations has been recently stressed both by theoretical and empirical literature on industrial organization and economic growth. For many scholars, one of the reasons of the delay of Italian industries in addressing rising global competitiveness and improving productivity can be traced back to the inability to create the right environment for the synergetic coevolution of the three above-mentioned variables. This paper tests the hypothesis that the coevolution within the firm of the three variables, could have been influenced by the belonging of the firms to industrial districts? environments. In particular it controls whether firms which have made more use of proximity in their activity express retards or even ?lock-in? phenomena in organizational innovations with respect to the two other complementary variables. After discussing the issue of coevolution for the three variables and the role that district environments can play for the formation of phenomena of organizational inertia, we test the hypothesis of co-evolution between organisations, ICT, and human resources through a survey of 223 ?district? and ?non-district? Italian small firms.

Keywords: Coevolution; ICT; Human Capital; Organizational Change; Geographical Proximity. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D21 O30 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16 pages
Date: 2014, Revised 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-cse, nep-geo, nep-hrm and nep-knm
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http://www.econ.uniurb.it/RePEc/urb/wpaper/WP_14_04.pdf First version, 2014 (application/pdf)

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