Management, skills and productivity
This paper studies how industries’ investment in organisational capital (OC) and workforce
skills relate to productivity, building on OECD estimates of OC, output data from
the OECD Structural Analysis (STAN) database, and both cognitive and task-based skill
indicators from the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies
(PIAAC). The paper finds that at the industry level, workers’ numeracy and endowment
of skills related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) correlate
positively with productivity, and that the positive correlation of STEM skills with
productivity is generally larger for OC workers. The paper also finds evidence that
skills dispersion harms industry performance. A gap between the ICT skills of OC and
non-OC workers seems to trigger a “lost in translation” type of mechanism, whereby
communication and information flows become less fluid and impinge upon the economic
performance of sectors, correlating negatively with productivity.
Published on February 23, 2021
In series:OECD Science, Technology and Industry Policy Papersview more titles