FORMS OF WORK ORGANIZATION AND REGIONAL PERFORMANCE IN EU-28 AND NORWAY

Abstract

Knowledge, intellectual assets, technology transfer or innovation activities, in general, are sources of growth in companies' competitiveness on markets, for labor productivity or for creation of quality jobs, essential for a sustainable and smart development. The analysis is based on the revised measurement framework for innovation activity and its regional results, on the one hand, and the Eurofound survey on working conditions, on the other. Identifying the direction and degree of interdependence between innovative work organization and innovation performance in 187 EU28 and Norway territorial units consists of a detailed analysis through which economic and social factors trends favoring innovation can be broken down. This facilitates an appropriate assessment of the areas where the European Commission (or other Community or national institutions) can focus their efforts to improve innovation performance. The estimated results reveal that innovative work organization forms have potentially partial non-homogeneous effects. Thus, the estimation for the most intensive work organization form (discretionary learning) suggests that, above all, a higher level of its presence in companies leads to a higher level of innovation performance at regional level, while "lean" production has negative consequences on performance. For the classical forms of work organization, Taylorism has a positive impact and traditional organizations have a negative one, both on the growth of employment in medium‑high/high tech manufacturing and knowledge‑intensive services, respectively in sales of new-to-market and new-to-firm innovations.

Keywords

• Forms of work organization
• workplace innovation
• regional innovation