Abstract
Purpose: The technological progress of production processes causes changes in the social structure of work, i.e. modifies the content of most, if not all, workplaces. In that respect, the identification of changes in the intensity of creativeness, the level of education, and the experience of employees in production processes and occupational tasks is a particularly important issue. The article investigates the interdependence among work creativity, education, and job experience of employees of one of the municipal companies operating in Poland. Methodology: The study employs firm-level data covering over 2,200 observations. The study gathered data from three major internal sources of information: the scopes of responsibilities of organizational positions, personnel documentation regarding the individual level of education and professional experience, and the results of interviews with executive staff and employees on particular posts. The research proceedings base on document analysis, structured interviews, teamwork methods, and a classification technique. Results: Research revealed that the complexity of work increased in the company. Jobs requiring higher levels of creativity are occupied by employees with relatively higher education. However, their average level of education in the analyzed period decreased as opposed to jobs that require relatively lower levels of creativity. The analysis of interdependence between creativity and job experience identified that there emerged a relatively shorter average job experience for employees who perform cognitive work. Moreover, the average job experience increased in the group of employees who perform routine manual and non-routine cognitive work. Implications: The study refers to the job polarization issue by confirming the tendencies of labor markets. It also addresses issues concerned with technological progress, although they are not confirmed by research in this paper. Originality/Value: The main contribution of the paper is the interesting dataset gathered. Furthermore, the paper addresses an interesting question where empirical research at the firm level is lacking, particularly municipal company.
Highlights
Changes that happen in business generally relate to technological progress, which affects social and economic processes and results in the acceleration of knowledge-based economy sectors (Godin, 2006), product and processes innovations, business process, business models (Blaschke et al, 2017), and corporate structures (Brown et al, 2014; Snow et al, 2017)
Scholars show that the technological progress of production processes reduces the production costs in which human work is applied while increasing the number of new, more complex tasks (Acemoglu and Restrepo, 2016)
The research revealed that job functions increasingly required higher levels of creativity from employees, in particular in relation to workers’ positions
Summary
Changes that happen in business generally relate to technological progress, which affects social and economic processes and results in the acceleration of knowledge-based economy sectors (Godin, 2006), product and processes innovations, business process, business models (Blaschke et al, 2017), and corporate structures (Brown et al, 2014; Snow et al, 2017). The article examines the change in the share of job types that require different levels of creativity and investigates differences in the level of education and experience of employees in relation to specific task types in one of the municipal companies in Poland. The study analyzed the change in the level of education and experience of employees in individual job groups in the period under consideration.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
