People or a tool? Does ICT lead to higher labor productivity?
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2020-08-13
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en
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This research examines the influence of ICT on labor productivity and checks how organizational innovations influence this relationship. The purpose of this research is to find to what extent and how ICT influences labor productivity and to what extent this relationship is influenced by organizational innovations. This in order to ultimately contribute to the discussion in the literature about the relationships between these variables. There are various tendencies, who have each their own point of view on the relationship between the variables ICT, organizational innovation, and labor productivity. This study examines these relationships via a mixed-method study to find if there are relationships and how these variables are related. Quantitative analyses of the EMS (2015) and semi-structured interviews with five manufacturing companies provide some interesting findings. First of all, ICT innovations do not influence labor productivity. Moreover, concerning the moderating variable organizational innovation, only one part of this innovation form influences the relationship between ICT and labor productivity. Structural organization innovation, in addition to ICT innovation, does strengthen the influence on labor productivity. According to the quantitative analysis, procedural organizational innovation does this not. Besides, the quantitative analysis revealed that structural and procedural innovation together do not strengthen the influence of ICT on labor productivity. However, the qualitative analysis reveals that procedural does strengthen this relationship as well. No qualitative support is found for the significant interaction effect of ICT and structural innovation. Moreover, interviewees argue also that there is no relationship between ICT innovation and labor productivity. Therefore, the results reveal that investing in ICT innovations does not lead to higher productivity, but at the moment, a company decided to invest in these innovations, then additional structural organizational innovations are desirable.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen