Innovation et qualité du facteur travail

Abstract

Innovation and quality of labour input. The aim of our paper is to analyse the determinants of the innovation propensity of the firm. Among the numerous works devoted to this subject, the interest of our research is, firstly, to use a direct measurement of innovation, instead of the usual proxies, as R&D expenditures and patents statistics, secondly, to emphasize the role of labour factor quality as a major determinant of innovation. We first build a definition of labour factor quality, based on a double dimension : individual skill level and functional distribution of jobs inside the firm. At the end we consider that each job category can be involved into the innovation process, at the different steps of it : conception, decision, implementation. This approach differs from the Schumpeterian one, devoted to the single entrepreneur influence. Our logit model takes into account four explanatory dimensions : the quality of labour factor employed inside the firm, the usual firm variables as size, capital intensity ..., the sectoral market structures and, at the end, the quality of labor factor employed inside the firm sector, as a proxy for the inter-firm diffusion of innovation. We use some individual firms data, including a direct and binary measurement of the innovation event, that distinguished between several types : radical vs incremental and product vs process vs organizational innovation. The French food industry with its 500000 employees and 42 sectors constitutes our empirical field. The results emphasize the influence of the usual firm structural variables. Firm size, particularly, is very clearly positively related to the innovation propensity. By the same time, some more original facts appear, as the influence of firm status : after controlling the sectoral influence, cooperative firms seem to innovate less than private ones. Labour factor quality plays a very significant role, but which deeply differs in regard to the kind of innovation. Some well-known results are obtained as the positive influence of the formally high-skilled job categories as R&D employees or engineers. But this influence remains the most important only in the specific case of radical innovation. By considering the incremental form of innovation, and particularly the incremental process innovation, it sounds quite surprising to point out the technicians intermediate category as the crucial one. By the same time, another surprising result is that neither managers category nor skilled workers one appear to influence the innovation propensity of the firm.