Information Technology, Workplace Organization and the Demand for Skilled Labor: Firm-Level Evidence

Abstract

Technology, wage inequality and the demand for skilled laborOver the past two decades, wage inequality has grown significantly in the UnitedStates. The total effect has been large, as the gap between wages at the 75th percentile of the distribution and the 25th has increased by nearly 50 percentage points. 1 The total effect has also been widespread, shifting relative wages in the top, middle, and bottom of the income distribution. The main cause of the growth in inequality appears to be a shift in the demand for workers of different kinds. Demand is growing for workers with exceptional talent, training, autonomy, and management ability much faster than for workers in low and middle-wage occupations.Parts of this shift in labor demand are explained by such broader economic patterns as globalization, sectoral shifts in employment and changes in labor marketinstitutions. Yet these forces appear too small to explain the breadth and depth of the shift, leaving a large residual shift (Krugman and Lawrence, 1993). Economists have concluded that this residual must reflect a "skill-biased technical change" in the way goods and services are produced in the economy (Griliches, 1969;Berndt, Morrison and Rosenblum, 1992;Berman, Bound and Griliches, 1994). The nature of this technical change are still not well-understood, but its size, breadth, and timing have led many observers to link it to the largest and most widespread technical change of the current era, information technology (see, e.g., Autor, Katz, and Krueger, 1997 and references therein).In this paper, we examine the firm-level evidence for a specific theory of how information technology (IT) could cause skill-biased technical change. In particular, we argue that the effects of IT on labor demand involve far more than simple automation and substitution. Instead, we highlight the central role of IT-enabled organizational change in

Investigating the effects of ICT on innovation and performance of European hospitals: an exploratory study

“…Furthermore, ICT can also directly drive ICT-based innovations in firms' processes and, products and services, and even business models (Tapscot et al 2000;Bresnahan et al 2002;Brynjolfsson and Saunders 2010). It can transform existing business processes and enable new products and services, and also existing products' and services' variety and personalization, which were not operationally and economically feasible before without ICT.…”

“…ICT can lead to significant innovations in the processes of the main hospital's functions, such as patient care, administration, clinics, pharmacies, laboratories, etc. In particular, it can drive improvements, simplifications and standardization of them by enabling the automatic execution of some of their tasks, transformations of some others or changes of their sequence (e.g., allowing previously serial tasks to be executed in parallel), or even eliminating some tasks (e.g., making some check tasks unnecessary) (Bresnahan et al 2002). Also, some healthcarespecific applications (e.g., CPOE, medical images archiving and transmission) and also some general ones (e.g., ERP) can improve integration and coordination between different 9 departments (e.g., the former between clinics and laboratories the former, or the latter between financial departments and clinics), lead to the establishment of new horizontal processes and introduce new work organization and practices (Lee et al 2012).…”

Overeducation or structural change? An analysis of the impact of ICT, university training and organisational change of business salaries

“…Brynjolfsson y Hitt (1998), por su parte, demuestran que las TIC y las nuevas prácticas de organización del trabajo interactúan conjuntamente. Más específicamente, la dotación de capital TIC y el número de ordenadores están positivamente relacionados con la difusión de equipos autónomos de trabajo, la implicación de los trabajadores en las decisiones estratégicas y la discrecionalidad de los trabajadores en la planificación de sus tareas.…”

“…En la segunda (Boning et al, 2001) se encuentra una contundente evidencia de las complementariedades entre la descentralización de la toma de decisiones y los pagos por incentivos. En la tercera (Bresnahan et al, 2002) se corrobora el importante efecto que las tecnologías digitales generan sobre la disposición de las empresas a desarrollar innovaciones en el puesto de trabajo, como, por ejemplo, la reorganización de la producción y la dotación de más poder al trabajador para la toma de decisiones. Adicionalmente, se encuentra una evidencia significativa de las complementariedades entre las TIC, los cambios organizativos y las habilidades de los trabajadores.…”

“…Un análisis del impacto de las TIC… en el uso de la tecnología y el conocimiento-se detecta un problema de sobreeducación, vinculado, entre otros, a la baja relevancia del cambio estructural en la explicación de su nivel salarial. en las estructuras organizativas (Bresnahan et al, 2002;Arvanitis, 2005). Precisamente, con este proceso de co-innovación, el impacto transformador de la inversión digital sobre los resultados de la actividad empresarial se hace más evidente (Brynjolfsson y Hitt, 2003).…”