Work Organisation, Forms of Employee Learning and Labour Market Structure: Accounting for International Differences in Workplace Innovation

Edward Lorenz

Journal of the Knowledge Economy, 2015, vol. 6, issue 2, 437-466

Abstract: Workplace innovation has attracted increasing attention within Europe both amongst researchers and policy makers. This paper begins by drawing on the results of the 5th European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) to map different forms of work organisation for the EU-27 and Norway. It then examines at both the individual level and the group or national level the relationships between a measure of process innovation and the use of what are referred to as the ‘discretionary learning’ (DL) forms of work organisation, characterised by high levels of employee learning, problem-solving and discretion in work. The results point to a systemic relation at the level of national innovation systems between the frequency of process innovations and the frequency of the DL forms. This is explained in part by the way the DL forms provide employees with opportunities for the exploration of new knowledge that can result in new process innovations that diffuse beyond the firm’s boundaries. The paper then proceeds to address the issue of labour market policies for promoting the adoption of the DL forms. It presents evidence to show that the likelihood of the DL forms is higher in nations with more developed systems of ‘flexible security’ characterised by high levels of labour market mobility, unemployment protection and active labour market measures. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Keywords: Workplace innovation; Discretionary learning; Labour markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s13132-014-0233-4 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Work Organisation, Forms of Employee Learning and Labour Market Structure: Accounting for International Differences in Workplace Innovation (2015)
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:spr:jknowl:v:6:y:2015:i:2:p:437-466

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/13132

DOI: 10.1007/s13132-014-0233-4

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the Knowledge Economy is currently edited by Elias G. Carayannis

More articles in Journal of the Knowledge Economy from Springer, Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().