1887

OECD SME and Entrepreneurship Papers

The series provides comparative evidence and analysis on SME and entrepreneurship performance and trends and on a broad range of policy areas, including SME financing, innovation, productivity, skills, internationalisation, and others.

Anglais

Workplace organisation and innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises

This paper examines the relationship between workplace organisation and innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It uses data for 30 countries, drawn from the European Company Survey, the OECD Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies and the Community Innovation Survey. It contrasts SMEs adopting a “learning organisation” or “discretionary learning” form of workplace organisation with SMEs adopting more hierarchical organisational forms. Learning organisation or discretionary learning SMEs are characterised by high levels of self-planning of tasks by employees, teamwork, knowledge exchange with employees and supervisors, on-the-job training, and employee performance incentives. They account for approximately one-third of SMEs across the countries examined. SMEs with this form of work organisation are more likely than other SMEs to develop new products/services and processes. At a macro level, countries with high proportions of these SMEs have higher rates of new-to-the-market innovations among SMEs and of SME innovation collaborations with other firms and organisations. The findings point to the potential role of policies favouring organisational change in SMEs as a means of stimulating SME innovation.

Anglais

Mots-clés: Innovation, SMEs, Skills, Workplace Organisation
JEL: L23: Industrial Organization / Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior / Organization of Production; O32: Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth / Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights / Management of Technological Innovation and R&D; L53: Industrial Organization / Regulation and Industrial Policy / Enterprise Policy; J24: Labor and Demographic Economics / Demand and Supply of Labor / Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity; O33: Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth / Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights / Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error