This work provides the results of an econometric analysis conducted on innovation activities (technology, organization, training and ICT), industrial relations and economic performances for manufacturing firms, with at least 20 employees, located in the province of Reggio Emilia in Emilia Romagna.
The aim of the analysis is twofold: at first we want to disentangle the relations between, on the one hand, the firm's innovation intensity in the four innovation activities and, on the other hand, the structural firm's characteristics, flexibilities in working relations and good-quality/participative-like industrial relations system; then, we aim to asses the role of the different innovation activities as drivers of high labour productivity.
A first result that worth stressing is the relation between two of the innovation activities, training and organizational changes, and many industrial relations and flexibility indicators. It seems to emerge a firm structure that couples changes in organization and in training activities with cooperative and participative-like industrial relations system. On the contrary, the ICT innovation index results more influenced by firms past performances, than by industrial relations indicators, as technological innovation does.
A second set of results, concerning the relations between innovation activities and economic performance, puts in evidence that it is the joint adoption of several components of the innovation activities to positively impact on labour productivity, rather than the adoption of single components. Furthermore, ordering the innovations in terms of their relevance as drivers of labour productivity we obtain the following ranking: (1) training activities; (2) technological innovation; (3) organizational innovation; (4) ICT. It is worth noting that the role of ICT emerges more robustly when the endogeneity issue is specifically addressed using two stage procedures.