Innovation and Job Quality

Abstract

Abstract The aim of this chapter is twofold. First, it is intended as a reflection about the interactions between innovation and job quality. The chapter argues that there are several different channels of transmission going from innovation to job quality and vice versa. In the first place, technological (and organizational) change leads to higher productivity, what we could call a ‘productivity dividend’, and to higher job quality, mostly by allowing wage increases and lower working hours. In the second place, technological innovation changes the nature of jobs, also affecting job quality by modifying working conditions. In the third place, technological innovation alters the structure of the economy through structural change, also affecting overall job quality as job quality is different in the different industries of the economy. Last, intrinsic job quality might itself be a driver of innovation. Secondly, we will test some of the potential interactions between innovation and job quality analysed in the first part of the chapter using the 2010 wave of the European Working Conditions Survey that for the first (and so far the last) time includes information about innovation and computerization by the firms.