The innovation impact on Employment Skills: Evidence from Spain Lodging Industry

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The innovation impact on Employment Skills
Evidence from Spain Lodging Industry

• Ester Martínez-Ros
• Universidad Carlos III Madrid
• Francina Orfila-Sintes
• Universitat Illes Balears

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Purpose of the paper

• To explore the impact of the introduction of
  innovations on the skill structure of employment.
• In particular
• Changes in the organization structure.
• Relation between skills of manager and skills of
  employees.
• Relation between skills of employees and service
  offered.

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Background

• New theory of Innovation in Services (Drejer,
  2004 Gallouj and Weinstein, 1997 Sundbo, 1997,
  Hipp and Groupp, 2005))
• Own survey
• Technological assets in key areas. ICT plays a
  pivotal role in generating opportunities and new
  services (Petit and Soete, 1996 Andersen et al.
  2000)
• Tourist sector is heteregenous (Tremblay, 1998)
  Lodging , Restaurant , Leisure , Transport
• Labor intensity
• Employment skills determine quality
• Employment skills are key determinants of the
  innovation decisions. Important role played by
  the human resources (Evangelista and Savona,
  2003 Ottenbacher and Gnoth, 2005)

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Research Questions

• Q1 Does the introduction of ICT increase the
  proportion of more skilled workers?
• Evangelista Savona (2003), Sirilli
  Evangelista (1998)
• Q2 Does organizational changes entail an
  up-grade of skill workplace?
• Piva et al. (2006), Osterman (1994)
• Q3 Does the manager education affect the skill
  structure of employment?
• Damanpour (1996), Heine et al (2003)
• Q4 Do improvements in service provision affect
  the skill structure of employment?
• Tsaur Lin (2004), Preissl (2000)

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Data

• SURVEY 331 HOTELS FROM THE BALEARIC ISLANDS
• Specific questionnaire to the hotel directors
• representative rate of 95.5 of population.
• Personal interviews with trained pollsters
• Summers of 2001 and 2004

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Methods

• We use three equations for each type of workers
  according to skills. We estimate the equations
  using a Tobit model since the dependent variables
  are truncated.
• High-skilled a1 b1 (ICT) c1
  Organization d1 Manager skill e1 Service
• u1
• Medium-skilled a2 b2 (ICT) c2
  Organization d2 Manager skill e2 Service
  u2
• Non-skilled a3 b3 (ICT) c3
  Organization d3 Manager skill e3 Service u3

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Variables

• Innovation activities
• Internal ICT organizing internal operations
• External ICT relations with environment
  (clients, suppliers, other hotels,)
• Organizational structure creates a more flexible
  firm with teams and reducing departments.
• Managers skills 1 without skills.
• Service provision service enlarged using the
  customers demands
• Controls

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Conclusions

• Innovation affects the different distribution of
  the employment skills in our sample.
• We confirm the skill-biased hypothesis for all
  innovation tools introduced except for the
  internal ICT.
• Other interesting results
• When director and manager are the same person ,
  the propensity to employ skill-workers is higher.
• The introduction of human practices increase the
  proportion of skill-workers.