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Report
What's driving the new economy? The benefits of workplace innovation
Using a unique nationally representative sample of U.S. establishments surveyed in both 1993 and 1996, we examine the relationship between workplace innovations and establishment productivity and wages. Using both cross-sectional and longitudinal data, we find evidence that high-performance workplace practices are associated with both higher productivity and higher wages. Specifically, we find a positive and significant relationship between the proportion of non-managers using computers and the productivity of establishments. We find that firms re-engineer their workplaces and incorporate` ...
Journal Article
Workplace practices and the new economy
This Economic Letter looks at how increased managerial focus on employee involvement, quality management, continuous innovation, and incentive-based compensation has boosted labor productivity and draws out some implications for future productivity gains. The research summarized here indicates that the combination of investment in new technology along with workplace innovation has had especially high payoffs to U.S. firms in the 1990s, and, with the continued reorganization of firms, high productivity growth may continue into the future.
Journal Article
Comments on spinning the top: considering the impact of women's paid and unpaid work
We should acknowledge that discrimination still exists and that womens work lives have been considerably improved by their ability to legally challenge discriminatory practices.
Journal Article
Job loss: bridging the research and policy discussion
Working Paper
How workers fare when employers innovate
Complementing existing work on firm organizational structure and productivity, this paper examines the impact of organizational change on workers. We find evidence that employers do appear to compensate at least some of their workers for engaging in high performance workplace practices. We also find a significant association between high performance workplace practices and increased wage inequality. Finally, we examine the relationship between organizational structure and employment changes and find that some practices, such as self-managed teams, are associated with greater employment ...
Journal Article
The growing wage gap: is training the answer?
Training programs targeted toward lower skilled workers to a much greater extent than is currently the case could play an important role in narrowing the wage gap. Specific strategies would include assisting firms to develop their own programs, improving the school-to-work transition for non-college-bound high school graduates, and providing displaced workers with the skills needed to take new jobs in growing sectors of the economy.
Working Paper
What's driving the new economy?: the benefits of workplace innovation
This paper argues that changes in workplace organization, including the usage of self-managed teams, incentive pay, and employee voice, have been a significant component of the turnaround in productivity growth in the United States during the 1990s. Our work goes beyond measuring the impact of computers on productivity and finds that these types of workplace innovation appear to explain a large part of the movement in multi-factor productivity in the United States over the period 1993-1996. These results suggest additional dimensions to the recent productivity growth in the US that may well ...