Francesca Sgobbi

Globalisation, e-business and SMEs: evidence from the Italian district of Prato

The paper explores how SMEs located in industrial districts explore e-business as a means to face the challenges posed by globalisation. By resorting to case studies conducted in the textile district of Prato, the research evidences the positive attitude of the interviewed entrepreneurs towards e-business. However, the characteristics of the considered products (textiles) and the district structure strongly affect the path followed to explore the scenarios opened by e-business. The collected evidence suggests that only few firms in the district are actively pursuing the full range of opportunities provided by e-business, and that isolated actions are not enough to foster collective learning and growth processes involving the whole district.

Alternative paths for the growth of e-commerce

Abstract Electronic commerce promises to be the drive behind a new wave of economic growth. Yet, the actual achievement of the prospected benefits and their allocation will depend on the features of the business models driving the diffusion of the new sales channel. The paper rejects the existence of a deterministic relation between e-commerce technological features and the structure of future electronic markets. Accordingly, alternative growth paths are explored and different scenarios are sketched depending upon the prevailing nature of the economic relations among the involved actors. For each scenario, the paper discusses the implications in terms of e-commerce diffusion speed and benefits allocation. The analysis of possible growth paths reveal that public intervention plays a non-negligible role in shaping the business model(s) that will eventually emerge, hence the impact of e-commerce on social welfare.

The return to education and skills in Italy

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to estimate the incidence of educational mismatch in Italy and the return to investment in education, controlling for employees’ ability. Contrary to most existing studies, the heterogeneity of individual performance is measured directly through the assessment of required and provided skills. Design/methodology/approach - Based on original data including over 3,600 face-to-face interviews, this paper appraises the incidence of self-assessed educational mismatch in the Italian private sector and estimates wage models of the economic returns to educational mismatch, skill requirements and provided skills. Findings - In Italy, under-educated employees outnumber over-educated ones and returns to required education and over-education are lower than in other industrialised countries. Individual heterogeneous ability, as captured by individual skills, is a significant determinant of wage, although the inclusion of direct measures of required and provided skills does not substantially affect the estimated coefficients of the return to investment in education. Practical implications - The omission of controls for the heterogeneous ability of employees biases the results of traditional ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates of wage models. However, the bias may be small enough to make simple OLS estimates on existing cross-sectional data an acceptable compromise to provide policy makers with reasonably accurate and up-to-date information. Originality/value - The paper provides a direct appreciation of individual heterogeneity that other studies can capture only through sophisticated indirect econometric techniques. In addition, the paper extends the set of available cross-country comparisons by estimating the educational mismatch and the returns to educational and skill mismatches in the overall Italian private labour market.

A Methodological Contribution to Measuring Skill (Mis)Match

Researchers have long expressed their discontent with the existing measures of skill mismatch. This paper argues that traditional measures cannot fully capture the essence of an inherently multidimensional and job‐specific concept such as skill mismatch. An empirical job‐based methodology is proposed that classifies the types of skill (mis)matches based on performance of core skills and supplementary skills. The proposed methodology is tested on a sample of 600 Portuguese retail bankers. The results support the job‐specific nature of skills. The differentiated distribution of skill (mis)match by job is a significant determinant of earnings among the sampled retail bankers.

Technological Innovation in Telecommunications: An Empirical Analysis of Specialisation Paths

Are advanced countries bound to follow a specialisation path in their innovation activities? This paper contributes to the issue by analysing the dynamic of innovation activities in telecommunications (TLCs) at the country level. Our claim is that countries are more likely to innovate in a product class if they have invented the dominant design in that class, or in classes that are similar for technological principles or engineering competencies. The research hypothesis has been empirically tested for the innovation activities of four European countries between 1978 and 1995. Data are drawn from the patents granted by the US Patents and Trademarks Office in the devices and systems for public TLCs networks. Based on cross-tabulation and VAR econometric models, we conclude that, in TLCs, advanced countries are unlikely to join technological trajectories started abroad; in particular, we have shown that innovation paths are engineering-specific, though they may cross the boundaries between basic technological principles. In addition, for our sample countries, preliminary evidence has been yielded that the TLCs innovation activities are independent of the demand dynamics.

Family Business Characteristics and the Approach to HRM in Overseas Ventures

This paper provides new evidence on the relationship between family business (FB) and human resource management (HRM) abroad. Our analysis provides two main results. First, not all organizational attributes of exert the same effect on the approach to abroad. Whereas participation of family members in the board of directors displays no significant impact, ownership and family managerial models favor the exploitation of the human resources supplied by the parent company. In contrast, the involvement of young successors favors an explorative attitude. Second, a multidimensional approach has better explanatory power compared with a dichotomous classification of FBs.

Wage policy models: what implications for vulnerable employees?

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of the employer’s wage policy on the wage dynamics of vulnerable groups of employees at large firms, including younger employees, employees on fixed-term contracts, and employees who take parental leave. Design/methodology/approach - – The first step of the analysis identifies the wage policy models adopted by a sample of large Italian companies by means of a cluster analysis based on firm-level variables that describe the wage level, wage structure, and wage dynamics. The second step estimates the impact of the employer’s wage policy on the wage growth path of matched employees, paying particular attention to groups of vulnerable workers. Findings - – The cluster analysis identifies four clusters whose characteristics reflect ideal types suggested by the literature. The 2SLS wage regressions that examine the impact of the employer’s wage policy model on a matched employee’s wage five years later confirm that the initial employer’s wage policy is a significant determinant of wage dynamics. However, the observed patterns significantly differ between the whole sample and the examined groups of vulnerable employees. Originality/value - – Despite consistent evidence of negative labour market outcomes for vulnerable employees, the impact of firm characteristics on segregation into disadvantaged groups is still under-researched. This paper provides new evidence of how the employer’s wage policy impacts the wage growth path of disadvantaged employees and highlights critical dimensions to reduce the risk of segregation into less favourable segments of the labour market.

Employment dynamics in the Italian telecommunications industry

Important quantitative and qualitative changes are affecting employment in the telecommunications manufacturing and services industry worldwide, namely the selective downsizing of employment stocks, the reshaping of job contents and employment composition, and the adoption of innovative labour practices. By resorting to micro-data from the archives of the Italian Institute for Social Security, the paper outlines employment dynamics in the Italian telecommunications industry between 1986 and 1995. Most notable changes detected for public telecommunications operators include the acceleration of inter-companies labour flows and the development of an external labour market for higher skilled employees. However, personnel policies to protect the holders of less tradable skills still exist.

The Borders of Inter-Firm Mobility for ICT Employees in Italy

Workers with low skill transferability risk longer unemployment spells between jobs and face higher probability of poorer working conditions. Those risks are particularly strong for professionals in the area of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), due to fast changing technologies and processes. The empirical analysis provided in this paper tests the borders of skill transferability for ICT employees by assessing the return to employer mobility for firm changers in the same industry and firm changers moving outside the ICT industry compared to firm stayers. The 1990-2004 empirical analysis is based on WHIP, a longitudinal dataset including a representative sample of employment relationships in Italy. The results show that firm changers benefit from a wage premium, provided that they remain in the ICT industry.

Learning in Networks of SMEs: A Case Study in the ICT Industry

This paper contributes to the debate on the participation of SMEs in voluntary business networks by framing the relationship between the different types of network-based learning. Learning about networking, which concerns the capability to set, manage, and terminate a strategic alliance, is opposed to learning by networking, which involves the sharing and the joint creation of technical knowledge. The proposed framework is tested in the case of a network of Italian SMEs in the ICT sector. Empirical evidence confirms that learning about networking enables learning by networking and helps to balance those tensions and conflicts that inevitably mark the existence of inter-firm networks. Learning about alliance management provides networked IT entrepreneurs with the capabilities to compete against larger competitors. As learning paths also drive the evolution of inter-firm alliances, networked entrepreneurs would benefit from choosing collective goals in line with their alliance management capabilities.