Digital technologies, learning capacity of the organization and innovation: EU-wide empirical evidence from a combined dataset

Nathalie Greenan and Silvia Napolitano

Industrial and Corporate Change, 2024, vol. 33, issue 3, 634-669

Abstract: This paper investigates the effects of digitalization and organizational practices on innovation in Europe, between 2010 and 2016. We analyze the cross-country and industry differences in firms’ investments and capabilities to adopt and use new technologies and their effects on innovation outputs. Along with traditional drivers of innovation, such as research and development (R&D) expenditure, two composite indicators are constructed. One encompasses direct measures of the adoption and use in enterprises of a set of digital technologies. The other measures the learning capacity of organizations, which captures the use of management tools and organizational practices concerned with the improvement of individual and organizational learning. Product, process, organizational, and marketing innovations are identified as well as their combinations within companies. Empirical evidence is provided by a unique dataset based on the integration at the sector within the country level of European Union (EU)-wide employers’ and employees’ surveys: the Community Innovation Survey (CIS), the Community Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) usage and e-commerce in enterprises survey (Eurostat), and the European Working Conditions Survey (Eurofound). The descriptive evidence shows that Digital technology adoption and use is rapidly growing across Europe, while the Learning capacity of organizations remains stagnant. By contrast, our results from the econometric analysis show that these investments can favor all forms of innovations and that, further, they may show some complementarity. Overall, a mix of product/process innovations and organizational/marketing innovations rests on joint investments in R&D, digital technology adoption and use, and learning capacity of the organization.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/icc/dtad064 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Digital technologies, learning capacity of the organisation and innovation EU-wide empirical evidence from a combined dataset (2022)
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:oup:indcch:v:33:y:2024:i:3:p:634-669.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Industrial and Corporate Change is currently edited by Josef Chytry

More articles in Industrial and Corporate Change from Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().