S&T Labour Markets: The Career Trajectories of Knowledge Workers
The diffusion of knowledge throughout the learning economy is of crucial relevance to economic prosperity and growth. But, as this paper attempts to show, the promotion of flexible labour market policy has to be treated with some caution. Even though it appears that one major way of diffusing knowledge throughout the economy is to promote labour mobility between firms, empirical evidence concerning the actual functioning of this labour flow is hard to come by.
In this paper we utilise some recent data and arrive at some unexpected results. We begin by analysing some of the attributes of knowledge workers (including S&T workers). Then it is demonstrated that external mobility (the mobility of workers between firms) can have some negative consequences. Internal mobility (the mobility of workers within firms) has some significant benefits, which must be considered by policy makers.
In terms of innovation (and hence economic growth) the proportion of scientists and engineers within firms is a significant factor – this result might lend some support to the notion of external mobility. However, we argue that the promotion of networks and collaborations of firms and other research institutions should not be pushed aside. The diffusion of knowledge and learning can be promoted by employees of different firms and organisations working together rather than shifting jobs. Knowledge intensive business services (KIBS) can have a vital role to play in facilitating knowledge transfers as an alternative to external mobility. We analyse firm level data that show the benefits of such collaborations and also refer to earlier work, which revealed the impact of KIBS at macro level.
Long abstract
