1,720,986 research outputs found
Is remote working here to stay? Lessons and ideas for a post-pandemic future
Full text linkThe article studies the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the labor market for what concerns the diffusion of remote working in Italy. First, it shows how working remotely represents a possibility for a minority of the workforce. Then, it discusses the presence of structural socio- economic gaps between those who can and cannot work remotely in terms of income, unemployment, and health security at work. Finally, it addresses the issue of poor regulation on remote working by offering an overview of the national regulatory framework and describing recent trends in collective bargaining
Automation in the automotive sector: Romania, Spain and Germany
Full text linkThis study investigates the impact of technological upgrades and automation on employment and working conditions in the automotive sector in Romania, Spain, and Germany. Utilising qualitative research methods, it examines work organisation, job quality, and occupational composition from a gender perspective.
The findings of the study, exploring the impact of technology, identified the main drivers for automation implementation as increased productivity, quality, and reduced manual labour availability. Automation and robotisation have also increased flexibility in coping with the variable composition of final products and the traceability of production processes. Barriers include high costs, technical difficulties, and the need for worker training. It observed that automation could simplify tasks, create new jobs, and increase responsibilities in middle management and team/shift leaders while potentially reducing worker autonomy and increasing work pace. Positive job quality implications include ergonomics and improved operators' safety. Automation has reduced the number of line operators while increasing maintenance workers, quality control, logistics and indirect labour. The study observed vertical and horizontal gender segregation in hybrid production processes, with advancements towards horizontal gender equality in technologically advanced establishments. Addressing cultural attitudes and technical challenges is crucial for equitable benefits as both industries undergo a transitional phase
Labour, unions and R&D in Italian firms
No full textHow and to what extent does organized labour contribute to shaping firms’ competitive strategies by fostering
innovation and investments in R&D? Drawing on insights from evolutionary theories and industrial relations
studies, this paper empirically investigates how firm-level collective bargaining impacts firms’ investments in
intangible assets, including R&D. The paper underlines how in the workplace context, where workers and
managers pursue conflicting interests, the presence of a strong trade union able to bargain can empower workers’
voice and persuade management to invest in innovation related assets rather than compete through cost cutting
strategies. We leverage a comprehensive and representative survey of Italian non-agricultural companies con
ducted by the National Institute for Public Policy Analysis to test these predictions. Baseline estimates indicate
that firm-level bargaining, particularly in highly unionized firms, is linked to investments in R&D and other
intangibles. Further analysis suggests that work organization clauses are key drivers of this positive relationship
Innovazione tecnologica e organizzazione del lavoro: il ruolo del sindacato nel caso Lamborghini
No full textNegli ultimi anni, la discussione su cambiamento tecnologico e futuro del lavoro è diventata centrale nei dibattiti di policy e nelle discussioni accademiche. Tuttavia, raramente il cosiddetto nuovo paradigma «Industria 4.0» viene calato all’interno di un’analisi approfondita dei processi di organizzazione del lavoro ed interazione dei soggetti operanti all’interno di un’organizzazione produttiva. In questo lavoro, proponiamo uno studio di caso sull’evoluzione storica della contrattazione aziendale all’interno dell’azienda automobilistica Lamborghini su alcuni temi specifici legati all’introduzione di nuove tecnologie, quali l’organizzazione del lavoro e la formazione dei lavoratori, attraverso uno studio approfondito della base documentale già utilizzata in Russo et al. (2018, 2019) ed una serie di interviste ai rappresentanti sindacali. La nostra analisi conferma la natura non neutrale del processo di innovazione tecnologica, esito della negoziazione tra direzione aziendale e lavoratori, e sottolinea la necessità di guardare con attenzione al ruolo delle relazioni industriali a livello aziendale per comprendere la direzione dei cambiamenti in discussione oggi.In recent years, discussion on technological change and the future of work has become central to policy and academic debates. However, the so-called «Industry 4.0» paradigm is rarely dropped within an in-depth analysis of the processes of work organization and interaction of the social actors within a productive organization. In this work, we propose a case study on the historical evolution of Lamborghini’s bargaining on some specific issues related to the introduction of new technologies, such as the work organization and the training of workers, through a detailed study of the document base already used in Russo et al. (2018, 2019) and several interviews to trade union representatives. Our analysis confirms the dual nature of the process of technological innovation, outcome of the negotiation between the ownership of the company and the workers, and underlines the need to look carefully at the role of industrial relations at the corporate level to understand the direction of the changes under discussion today
Digitalization and automation in the automotive sector: the manifold role of lean production
No full textThe increasing adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies in the manufacturing industry and the recent upsurge of Artificial Intelligence challenge traditional production models, especially in the automotive sector, where the transition to electrical mobility is underway. The interdependences between work organization models and new technologies tend to be underestimated in the economic literature, mainly focused on identifying the potential job displacement effect and the demand for new skills due to robots and AI. Assessing the degree of concrete diffusion of advanced automation, new digital technologies and big data in the workplace is complex. The analysis of business and innovation strategies pursued by companies must account for the heterogeneity stemming from production specialization, managerial culture, position in the supply chain, and national and local institutions to understand the emerging varieties of organization and technological mix. The paper addresses the issue of the unfolding of a “lean 4.0” scenario, according to which the lean organization model – nowadays dominant in the automotive sector - can be efficiently combined with I4.0 technologies. New evidence is collected through a qualitative analysis of four automotive companies in Romania and Spain, two peripheral countries that witnessed a broad reconfiguration of their automotive sector in recent years. The findings from the field study offer a critical contribution to how I4.0 technologies and lean models are currently adopted in the automotive sector, highlighting some key issues. First, we identify different patterns of implementation of automation and digitalization, usually confused as a single entity but concretely implemented by companies for distinct objectives and with a different degree of diffusion. Second, we provide compelling evidence on the possible ambiguity in adopting lean practices, especially those requiring a more direct involvement of workers in decision-making, collaboration and learning. Third, by analyzing OEMs and suppliers, the research highlights relevant differences in how production specialization and value chain positioning can favour or hinder the implementation of specific lean regimes
Conflict and participation in bargaining at company level: the Lamborghini case
Full text linkIn the last 50 years, the nature and quality of industrial relations in Italy have changed considerably. The national bargaining process has been severely weakened and, in the past decade, the social dialogue between parties has been questioned on several occasions. Based on an original corpus of texts documenting bargaining at company level over 50 years within Lamborghini (which was acquired by the Audi VW group in 1998), in this article we analyse the core issues of the debate between the parties, and the very ways in which the debate takes place. Combining techniques of automatic text analysis and reading of individual documents, we obtain a periodisation of the issues at the heart of corporate bargaining that contribute to a discussion of the key elements characterising the virtuous circle of company development and quality of industrial relations.Negli ultimi 50 anni, la natura e la qualità delle relazioni industriali in Italia sono notevolmente cambiate. Il processo di contrattazione a livello nazionale è stato fortemente indebolito e, nell’ultimo decennio, il dialogo sociale tra le parti messo in discussione in diverse occasioni. Basandoci su un corpus che documenta 50 anni di contrattazione di secondo livello in Lamborghini (acquisita nel gruppo Audi VW nel 1998), in questo articolo analizziamo le tematiche al centro del confronto tra le parti, e le modalità stesse in cui avviene il confronto. Affiancando tecniche di analisi automatica dei testi e lettura di singoli documenti, otteniamo una periodizzazione dei temi al centro della contrattazione aziendale che ci aiutano a discutere gli elementi chiave che caratterizzano il circolo virtuoso di sviluppo dell’impresa e qualità delle relazioni industriali
Non-standard work and innovation. Evidence from European industries
No full textFollowing a market-oriented approach, policies aimed at increasing
labour flexibility by weakening employment protection institutions
should enable firms to efficiently allocate resources, improve their
capability to compete on international markets and adjust to economic
cycle. This work documents the rise of non-standard (i.e. temporary and
part-time) work in five European countries (Germany, France, Italy, the
Netherlands and the United Kingdom) over the period 1994–2016 and
investigates the nexus between the use of non-standard work and
innovation performance using data for 18 manufacturing and 23 service
industries. Contrary to the objectives that market-oriented policy
recommendations promised to achieve, we show that there is a
significantly negative association between the share of workers
employed under non-standard contractual arrangements and the
introduction of both product and process innovation. Furthermore, we
show that the harmful consequences of the spread of non-standard
work on firms’ product innovation propensity are more pronounced in
high-tech sectors
Non-Voting Party and Wage Inequalities: Long-Term Evidence from Italy
Full text linkBy means of a long-run analysis on electoral and inequality data, this article shows that there exists a temporal correlation between inequalities and non-voting behaviour. Non-voting is progressively becoming a widespread phenomenon, beyond specific national contexts, and challenges the functioning of democracies in advanced capitalist countries. Notably, data on electoral results in Italy do not show a clear leading group of non-voters. Although historically concentrated in southern Italy and predominantly female, non-voters are proportionally increasing in the centre and in the north of the country, independently of the gender dimension. The root causes of the phenomenon should be traced back not only to the political and institutional dimension, but also to a widespread socio-economic determinant, namely labour market inequality, the driver addressed in this article
Non-Standard Work and Innovation: Evidence from European industries
Full text linkFollowing a market-oriented approach, policies aimed at increasing labour flexibility by weakening employment protection institutions should enable firms to efficiently allocate resources, improve their capability to compete on international markets and adjust to economic cycle. This work documents the rise of non-standard (i.e. temporary and part-time) work in five European countries (Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) over the period 1994–2016 and investigates the nexus between the use of non-standard work and innovation performance using data for 18 manufacturing and 23 service industries. Contrary to the objectives that market-oriented policy recommendations promised to achieve, we show that there is a significantly negative association between the share of workers employed under non-standard contractual arrangements and the introduction of both product and process innovation. Furthermore, we show that the harmful consequences of the spread of non-standard work on firms’ product innovation propensity are more pronounced in high-tech sectors
Anatomy of the Italian occupational structure: concentrated power and distributed knowledge
Full text linkWhich type of work do Italians perform? In this contribution, we aim at detecting the anatomy of the
Italian occupational structure by taking stock of a micro-level dataset registering the task content, the
execution of procedures, the knowledge embedded in the work itself, called ICP (Indagine
Campionaria sulle Professioni), the latter being comparable to the U.S. O*NET dataset. We perform
an extensive empirical investigation moving from the micro to the macro level of aggregation. Our
results show that the Italian occupational structure is strongly hierarchical, with the locus of power
distinct by the locus of knowledge generation. It is also weak in terms of collaborative and worker in-
volvement practices, and possibility to be creative. Our analysis allows to pinpoint the role exerted by
hierarchical structures, decision-making autonomy, and knowledge as the most relevant attributes
characterizing the division of labor
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