Firm Innovation and Employment in South Africa: Examining the Role of Export Participation and Innovation Novelty

Karmen Naidoo, Marta Bengoa, Erika Kraemer-Mbula and Fiona Tregenna

Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, 2023, vol. 59, issue 2, 589-604

Abstract: This paper studies the effects of process innovation and product innovation on firm-level employment in South Africa. We contribute through two novel extensions, analyzing how export status and the degree of novelty of innovation affect the innovation-employment relationship. We find process innovation to be more employment generating than product innovation. Furthermore, both process and product innovations have larger positive effects on employment growth for exporting firms relative to non-exporting firms. Finally, firms that introduce radical innovations that are new to the market, experience a higher positive employment effect than firms that introduce innovations that are new to only the firm.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/1540496X.2022.2098012 (text/html)
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mes:emfitr:v:59:y:2023:i:2:p:589-604

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/MREE20

DOI: 10.1080/1540496X.2022.2098012

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Emerging Markets Finance and Trade from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().