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ICT, Innovation and Productivity: Evidence Based on Eastern European Manufacturing Companies

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Abstract

The main motivation behind this study is to evaluate the relationships among ICT, management practices, innovation and human capital in a sample of manufacturing enterprises in Eastern European countries. Using data from the Management, Organisation and Innovation Survey 2009 for a representative sample of 444 companies in Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine and using structural equation modelling and ordinary least squares, we examined direct and indirect determinants of labour productivity. The principal finding that emerged from the study is that wage was the main direct determinant of labour productivity. Moreover, the relationship between ICT and its complementarities and productivity has been established indirectly, mainly by enterprise workers’ use of the ICT. The results of the investigation bridge the gap in insufficient academic research about Eastern European countries, extend existing research on the company-level labour productivity determinants and enable comparison of the results at the international level.

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Fig. 1

Notes

  1. Quality of management scores differ from results of Bloom et al. (2012), due to different sample size included into analysis.

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Acknowledgment

We would like to thank the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development for having kindly supplied firm-level data for this project, in particular Helena Schweiger.

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Correspondence to Aleksandra Skorupinska.

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Skorupinska, A., Torrent-Sellens, J. ICT, Innovation and Productivity: Evidence Based on Eastern European Manufacturing Companies. J Knowl Econ 8, 768–788 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13132-016-0441-1

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