The kind of things that money just can't buy: The role of potential absorptive capacity in enhancing firm-level employment growth

Luca Cattani, Francesco Savoia and Ludovico Bullini Orlandi

Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2024, vol. 208, issue C

Abstract: This study provides new firm-level evidence on the impact of the technological change generated by investments in instrumental goods on employment growth. We posit that firms' potential absorptive capacity moderates this effect by leveraging the embodied technological change (ETC) contained in these goods. Testing our hypothesis on administrative linked employer-employee (LEED) data for a sample of 6.120 manufacturing firms over 2008–2017, we find that ETC investments have an overall positive and significant effect on employment growth. Such an effect depends on firms' technological intensity and size class, with a larger impact on high-tech and large firms. However, higher levels of potential absorptive capacity increase positively and significantly the effect for low-tech and SMEs in a way that is more compatible with a conditional role than a moderating one. Our findings imply that regional policies should consider firm-specific investments targeted to human capital accumulation and collaborative partnerships to maximize the occupational impact of ETC investments.

Keywords: Innovation; Employment; Potential absorptive capacity; Technological intensity; LEED (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004016252400444X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:tefoso:v:208:y:2024:i:c:s004016252400444x

DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2024.123646

Access Statistics for this article

Technological Forecasting and Social Change is currently edited by Fred Phillips

More articles in Technological Forecasting and Social Change from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().