Bernhard Dachs

What follows tertiarisation? structural change and the role of knowledge-based services

The rise of the service economy has been the predominant pattern of structural change in the twentieth century. This article investigates the driving forces behind the recent stages of this development. Focusing on international input—output data from the early 1970s to the 1990s, a decomposition analysis separates the quantitative impacts of demand, technology and trade-driven determinants of output growth. Our findings confirm the rise of knowledge-based services as the most dynamic component, thus strengthening the case for ‘quaternarisation’ as a process which is distinctly characterised by the substantial contribution of technological and organisational change to structural development.

Why do Firms Co-operate for Innovation? - A comparison of Austrian and Finnish CIS 3 results

This paper analyses differences in the cooperative behaviour of innovative firms in Finland and Austria. We use data from the third wave of the Community Innovation Survey (CIS3). Descriptive statistics indicate that the rate of innovators is quite similar in Austria and Finland, while the number of cooperating enterprises is considerably higher in Finland. Econometric analysis reveals that a number of factors that determine cooperative arrangements are only significant in one or the other country. We conclude that cooperative behaviour in the two countries is much more dependent on national factors and much deeper rooted in the underlying innovation systems than the existing literature may assume.

What drives the internationalisation of innovation? Evidence from European patent data

This paper analyses the current internationalisation of innovation activities and identifies the main drivers for the countries of the European Union (EU). We employ patent applications at the European Patent Office covering the period 2000–2005. Our results show that the internationalisation of innovation is mainly due to an intensified co-operation between EU member states, as well as stronger ties between Europe and the USA. Innovative activity of EU enterprises is hardly globalised in the sense of being equally distributed around the world. Multivariate analysis reveals that cross-border patents between two countries increase with absolute market size of the host country, with rising levels of research and development in the home and host country and with a stronger protection of intellectual property rights in the host country. Distance between home and host country is negatively related to the number of cross-border patents. A common language between two countries and joint membership in the EU are also factors that considerably spur overseas innovation activity.

Servitisation of European manufacturing: evidence from a large scale database

Manufacturing firms increasingly produce and provide services along with or instead of their traditional physical products. The goal of this paper is to provide new evidence for this servitisation of European manufacturing and test previous findings based on case studies with a large, firm-level data set. Empirical results indicate that service turnover of manufacturing firms is still small compared to the turnover with physical products. National differences play only a minor role in explaining the degree of servitisation. Firm size is of more relevance. Results reveal a U-shaped relationship between firm size and servitisation which points to advantages of both, small and large firms in servitisation. Moreover, servitisation is positively related to product complexity and the likelihood that the firm introduces product innovation.

Innovation, Employment Growth, and Foreign Ownership of Firms - A European Perspective

This paper examines how foreign-owned and domestically owned firms transform innovation into employment growth. The empirical analysis, based on the model of Harrison, Jaumandreu, Mairesse and Peters (2008) and CIS data for 16 countries, reveals important differences between the two groups: Due to general productivity increases and process innovation, foreign-owned firms experience higher job losses than domestically owned firms. At the same time, employment- creating effects of product innovation are larger for foreignowned firms. Together with employment-stimulating effects stemming from existing products, they overcompensate the negative displacement effects resulting in net employment growth in foreign-owned firms. However, net employment growth turns out to be smaller in foreign-owned firms than in domestically owned firms.

The Internationalisation of Business R&D

It has become clear over the past few decades that enterprises not only produce and sell abroad but increasingly also develop goods and services outside their home countries; a development now known as the internationalisation of business R&D. This book presents a comprehensive picture of the current state of internationalisation of R&D in the business sector.

Innovation, Creative Destruction and Structural Change: Firm-Level Evidence from European Countries

Abstract The shift of employment from lower to higher productive firms is an important driver for structural change and industry dynamics. We investigate this reallocation in terms of employment gains and losses from innovation. New employment created by product innovation may be offset by employment losses in related products, known as ‘cannibalisation’ or ‘business stealing’ effects in the literature, by employment losses from process and organisational innovation and by general productivity increases. The paper investigates this effect empirically with a large data set from the European Community Innovation Survey. We find that employment gains and losses increase with technology intensity of the sector. High-technology manufacturing shows the strongest employment gains and losses from innovation, followed by knowledge-intensive services, low-technology manufacturing and less knowledge-intensive services. The net contribution of innovation to employment growth is mostly positive, an exception being manufacturing industries in recession periods.

Internationalisation of R&D in ICT

An important aspect of the ongoing integration of the world economy is the internationalisation of research and development. Enterprises not only produce and sell, but also increasingly develop goods and services outside of their home countries. The internationalisation of RD Veugelers 2005).

Trend spotting the future of information society technology human resources

This paper identifies and highlights the main issues and challenges that will shape the human resource factor in the future development of the Information Society Technology (IST). It is done by addressing the future of human resources for IST from three different angles, namely, the future composition of IST workforce, the future geography of Human Resources for IST (HRIST) supply and demand and the future orientation of IST markets. The paper argues that the pending demographic change, the internationalisation of education, labour and markets and the continuous shift from an industrial economy to an information knowledge-based economy will transform the dynamics of workforce supply and demand as we know it today. Foresighting the future of IST workforce requires identifying and understanding these new dynamics.

Knowledge Flows between Multinational Enterprises and National Innovation Systems: The Case of Austria

The international business (IB) literature regards knowledge spillovers from foreign affiliates to domestic enterprises as one of the major benefits a host economy derives from the presence of multinational enterprises (MNEs) (Blomstrom and Kokko, 1998). This chapter deals with the opposite situation, and sets out to measure the extent to which innovative MNEs utilize the knowledge base of their host countries. We believe that spillovers from the host country to MNE affiliates are extremely relevant to science and technology policy. Given the fact that innovation is an interactive process that depends heavily on external sources (Edquist, 2005), spillovers may be one of the most important reasons for MNEs to undertake innovative activities at any particular location.