How Europe's economies learn: a comparison of work organization and innovation mode for the EU-15

Anthony Vere Arundel, Edward Lorenz, Bengt-Åke Lundvall () and Antoine Valeyre

Industrial and Corporate Change, 2007, vol. 16, issue 6, pages 1175-1210

Abstract: This article explores the link between the organization of work and innovation by developing national aggregate indicators for the EU member states of organizational forms and innovation modes (how firms innovate). The organizational indicators are constructed from the Third European Survey of Working Conditions results for 8081 salaried employees in 2000. The innovation mode indicators are calculated using the results of the third Community Innovation Survey (CIS-3) for innovation activities between 1998 and 2000. The analysis shows that in nations where work is organized to support high levels of discretion in solving complex problems firms tend to be more active in terms of innovations developed through their in-house creative efforts. In countries where learning and problem solving on the job are more constrained, and little discretion is left to the employee, firms tend to engage in a supplier-dominated innovation strategy. Their technological renewal depends more on the absorption of innovations developed elsewhere. These patterns remain when we divide the economies into manufacturing and services. Copyright 2007 , Oxford University Press.

Date: 2007
View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/icc/dtm035 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:indcch:v:16:y:2007:i:6:p:1175-1210

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.oup.co.uk/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Industrial and Corporate Change is edited by David Teece, Glenn R. Carroll, Nick Von Tunzelmann, Giovanni Dosi and Franco Malerba

More articles in Industrial and Corporate Change from Oxford University Press
Address: Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK
Series data maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().