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We present theoretical and empirical evidence challenging early studies that found unions were detrimental to workplace innovation. Under our theoretical model, unions prefer product innovation to labor-saving technological process innovation, thus making union wage bargaining regimes more conducive to product innovation than competitive pay setting. We test the theory with population-representative workplace data for Britain and Norway. We find strong support for the notion that local bargaining leads to product innovation, either alone or together with technological innovation.

This paper aims to analyze Emil Lederer's and Sumner Slichter's theses on the concept of technological unemployment.

Given the presence of core elements of both economists' visions in the famous Debate on Technological Unemployment (1928‐1933), it is surprising that so little attention has been paid to their works. This paper makes an attempt to interpret certain parts of Emil Lederer's oeuvre in association with the writings of Sumner Slichter based on a careful examination of their writings and their theoretical investigations.

The writings of both economists seem to converge to similar views. Analytically, they both attempted to explain the inability of the economic system to readjust and absorb the unemployed workers. Moreover, both economists disputed the assertion of Say's law that full equilibrium would be assured by the functioning of market forces. In contrast to other economists, they both attached increased significance to the supply side of the economy and in particular to the role of technical change. Furthermore, it seems that both authors were in favor of restrained technological change, which would be absorbed smoothly from the economic system. Another interesting aspect of both economists' investigations is their respective theoretical shift around 1930, which could be attributed to the disastrous consequences of the Great Depression. The paper concludes that, despite some differences between Lederer and Slichter, the parallels are impressive.

Most aspects of Slichter and Lederer's works remain unexplored. Thus, the connection between them may be very useful for promoting dialogue between different schools or strands of thought.

The author argues that we must stop and take a look at what our insistence on human labour as the basis of our society is doing to us, and begin to search for possible alternatives. We need the vision and the courage to aim for the highest level of technology attainable for the widest possible use in both industry and services. We need financial arrangements that will encourage people to invent themselves out of work. Our goal, the article argues, must be the reduction of human labour to the greatest extent possible, to free people for more enjoyable, creative, human activities.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate CEOs as leaders in manufacturing organizations. The focus is on the roles of CEOs in organizational adaptations to changing and continuously evolving external environments.

The paper is grounded on a conceptual theory of molecular structuring inside organizations. The authors then investigate CEOs' leadership roles. For this purpose a long established Singapore perceptual database of corporate productivity practices is utilized. Two contrasting samples (N=65) of high and low adaptability manufacturing firms are obtained. Statistical technique of Pearson product correlation yields intriguing, contrasting patterns of findings. On the basis of these results, we then discuss the roles of CEOs in highly adaptive versus lowly adaptive manufacturing firms.

The results are seen through the lenses of molecular structuring of organizations suggest a sharp contrast in the nature of the roles of CEOs. In organizations that are highly adaptive, there is much closer interactions. In the lowly adaptive, CEOs seem uninvolved, staying aloof from core operations of their firms.

Since, the contrasting samples are from within the manufacturing sector, these insights are particularly relevant to China as a global manufacturing centre.

This is the first paper of its kind to empirically validate the prescriptions of Lao Tzu, the ancient Chinese sage and author of the 2,500 years old Tao Te Ching.

This study examines the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on employment and economic growth in Ghana and examines the role of technology in these relationships.

This study applied the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to cointegration and Granger causality tests to data from 1995 to 2017.

Based on the empirical analysis, the key findings are as follows: FDI does not affect economic growth or employment in Ghana. However, technology moderates the relationship between FDI and economic growth and FDI and employment in the short run. The study also finds that technology exerts a positive effect on economic growth in both short and long run, whereas trade has a significantly negative effect on economic growth in Ghana.

The greatest constraint that faced the authors is the nonavailability of data,.

The transfer of technology agreement enshrined in the GIPC Act should be made more robust and unambiguous, to make it a strict requirement for MNEs to be allowed to operate in Ghana. This increases Ghana's gains from FDI inflow.

The GIPC should tighten its monitoring regime so that MNEs do not exceed their expatriate employment quotas. This will ease the burden of unemployment among the youth in Ghana.

This study adds a new dimension to the literature on the impact of FDI on emerging economies by examining the role of technology in the association between FDI and growth, and FDI and employment.

This paper aims at assessing the impact of innovation on productivity as sustainable development can be attained primarily through non-resource-driven growth. Secondly, it also proposes to reflect on the rising capital intensity in the Indian industries as technology advancement, particularly in the light of the fourth industrial revolution, is expected to reduce the labour absorbing capacity of the industrial sector.

Based on panel data for different Indian firms in various groups of industries, this paper estimates TFPG and TE (following Cornwell et al. methodology) and assesses the impact of R&D expenditure on the performance indices. Secondly, it measures the capital intensity across various groups of industries to reflect on the “employment problem”.

Innovation does not seem to enhance the performance index in a very significant manner across industry groups considered in the study. The lack of extensive evidence on impact of innovation on total factor productivity growth suggests that innovation does not necessarily result in technological progress while the need of the hour is to experience non-resource-driven growth on the one hand and employment growth on the other. The positive impact of innovation on efficiency as seen in the paper can be interpreted as the expenditure incurred to realize the potentiality of the technology which is possibly imported. However, capital accumulation is resulting in rapid productivity growth at the cost of employment.

Capturing technological progress in terms of TFPG can be subjected to criticism.

Policy implications for employment generation and inclusive growth are derived.

The study cautions us about the adverse implications in terms of employment growth.

Assessing the impact of innovation on performance such as TFPG and TE is rather rare in the literature, and this paper tries to reflect on this aspect using the Indian firm-level data. Secondly, the trade-offs between productivity growth and employment growth are brought out distinctly in order to highlight the declining labour absorbing capacity of the industrial sector. This enables us to reflect on the adverse consequences of the fourth industrial revolution.

Dairy farms, along with livestock and specialty crop farms, face a tight labor supply and increasing labor costs. To overcome the challenging labor market, farm managers can increase labor-use efficiency through both human resource and capital investments. However, little is known about the relationship between such investments and farm profitability. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between dairy farm financial performance and labor-use efficiency, as measured by labor productivity (milk sold per worker equivalent); labor costs (hired labor cost per unit of milk sold and hired labor cost per worker); and investment in labor-saving equipment.

Cluster analysis is applied to partition dairy farms into three performance categories (high/middle/low), based on farms’ rate of return on equity, asset turnover ratios and net dairy income per hundredweight of milk. Next, the annual financial rank is fitted into both random- and farm-level fixed-effects ordered logit and linear models to estimate the relationship between dairy farms’ financial performance and labor-use efficiency. This study also investigates the implications of using a single financial indicator as a measure of financial performance, which is the dominant approach in literature.

The study finds that greater labor productivity and cost efficiency (as measured by hired labor cost per unit of milk sold) are associated with better farm financial performance. No statistically significant relationship is found between farm financial performance and both hired labor cost per worker and advance milking systems (a proxy of capital investment in labor-saving technology). Future studies would benefit from better measurements of labor-saving technology. This study also demonstrates inconsistency in regression results when individual financial variables are used as a measure of financial performance. The greater labor-use efficiency on high-performing farms may be a combination of hiring more-skilled workers and managerial strategies of reducing unnecessary labor activities. The results emphasize the importance of managerial strategies that improve overall labor-use efficiency, instead of simply minimizing total labor expenses or labor cost per worker.

This study examines the importance of labor productivity and labor cost efficiency for dairy farm management. It also develops a novel approach which brings a more comprehensive financial performance evaluation into regression models. Furthermore, this study explicitly demonstrates the potential for inconsistent results when using individual financial variable as a measure of financial performance, which is the dominant measurement of financial performance in farm management studies.

This chapter investigates productivity and cost patterns in the all-cargo US air transport sector. We empirically test the productivity growth influence of changes in unexplained technology, air operations movement characteristics, and factor input prices. Findings show productivity trends depicting negative growth for the 1993–2001 sample, then shifting measurably such that productivity trends depict positive growth for the 2002–2014 sample. The post 2001 growth was fueled by changes in unexplained technological advancements. We interpret this finding as an indication of the importance of technological innovation as a performance enhancer in this transport sector. Findings also reveal a lack of productivity change associated with changes in input prices and movement characteristics. We interpret input price findings as indicating increases in factor input prices such as wages and fuel prices are commensurate with enhanced labor and fuel productivity. The movement characteristic findings are attributable to a lack of sustained increases in load factors, stage length, network size and carrying more volume over the network (density).

Internationalisation of the Australian economy is profoundly changing the macroeconomic fabric of the Australian labour market. This study aims to shed light on both trade and technology effects on the Australian labour market during the study period 1983(4)‐1995(3). The study uses unit root and multicointegration econometrics, general to specific modelling and encompassing tests to test how trade liberalisation and technical progress have immiserised Australian labour by increasing unemployment or through the widening of skill differentiated wage disparity. The study concludes with some policy perspectives on labour market deregulation in Australia.

The purpose of this paper is to outline and examine existing economic findings about the effects of information and communication technology on economic productivity, welfare and social change.

Initially, existing findings about consequences of ICT for macro-level economic activity and productivity are outlined, and then this is correspondingly done for firms and for industries before a variety of welfare and social consequences of ICT are discussed. The industry-level discussion includes empirical data as well as analytical material.

Most studies indicate that ICT has significantly added to GDP and has been growth enhancing but these effects vary considerably between economies. The elasticity of aggregate production in relation to investment in ICT has risen with the passage of time. Reasons for this are suggested. The contribution of value added to the output of different industries varies substantially. At the micro-economic level, it is shown how ICT can increase technical and allocative efficiency, and how it can increase consumers’ surplus and producers’ surplus by lowering market transaction costs. Socioeconomic inequalities and concerns arising from the supply of e-commodities are discussed.

Provides a comprehensive but short overview of economic findings about the impact of ICT and brings attention to socioeconomic issues that have been overlooked or downplayed in that discussion. Includes new micro-economic analysis of the distributional impact of ICT and indicates areas requiring social policy intervention.