Industrial policy and promotion of competitiveness

Includes bibliography

O ensino de matemática na escola Industrial de Cuiabá/MT no período de 1942 e 1968

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Empresariado industrial e desenvolvimento socioeconômico: estudo do discurso do empresariado calçadista paulista frente ao mundo globalizado (1995-2010)

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Environmental training and environmental management maturity of Brazilian companies with ISO14001: empirical evidence

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Green training supporting eco-innovation in three Brazilian companies: practices and levels of integration

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show results from the relationship between green/environmental training and the development of three projects of low-carbon eco-innovations in top Brazilian companies. Design/methodology/approach – This study includes three organizational projects for low-carbon eco-innovations in products (A, B and C) with the objective of reducing their impact on GHG emissions, the so-called low-carbon products. Data were collected from several sources of evidence, including in-depth interviews, document analyses and direct observations. Findings – The authors verified that the environmental training interface for mitigating climate change is relevant for the systematic development of low-carbon products in most of the cases studied. Originality/value – Low-carbon eco-innovations are a trend in the corporate world; however, there is not enough literature and practical evidence on this subject. Thus, this paper adds new evidence to the literature.

Low-carbon operations and production: putting training in perspective

The purpose of this paper is mainly to show how training may support low-carbon operations and production management in a more sustainable organizational context. Design/methodology/approach – A conceptual framework to facilitate the integration between training and low-carbon operations and production is presented. Findings – To accomplish better training in a low-carbon organization, some steps should be followed. Challenges may occur, including the necessity of collaboration across the supply chain. Research limitations/implications – The proposed framework should be applied and improved based on the actual conditions in organizations.

The firm. Techno-organizational changes, industrial relations and performances. An enquiry on Reggio Emilia local industrial system

It is not unknown that the evolution of firm theories has been developed along a path paved by an increasing awareness of the organizational structure importance. From the early “neoclassical” conceptualizations that intended the firm as a rational actor whose aim is to produce that amount of output, given the inputs at its disposal and in accordance to technological or environmental constraints, which maximizes the revenue (see Boulding, 1942 for a past mid century state of the art discussion) to the knowledge based theory of the firm (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995; Nonaka & Toyama, 2005), which recognizes in the firm a knnowledge creating entity, with specific organizational capabilities (Teece, 1996; Teece & Pisano, 1998) that allow to sustaine competitive advantages. Tracing back a map of the theory of the firm evolution, taking into account the several perspectives adopted in the history of thought, would take the length of many books. Because of that a more fruitful strategy is circumscribing the focus of the description of the literature evolution to one flow connected to a crucial question about the nature of firm’s behaviour and about the determinants of competitive advantages. In so doing I adopt a perspective that allows me to consider the organizational structure of the firm as an element according to which the different theories can be discriminated. The approach adopted starts by considering the drawbacks of the standard neoclassical theory of the firm. Discussing the most influential theoretical approaches I end up with a close examination of the knowledge based perspective of the firm. Within this perspective the firm is considered as a knowledge creating entity that produce and mange knowledge (Nonaka, Toyama, & Nagata, 2000; Nonaka & Toyama, 2005). In a knowledge intensive organization, knowledge is clearly embedded for the most part in the human capital of the individuals that compose such an organization. In a knowledge based organization, the management, in order to cope with knowledge intensive productions, ought to develop and accumulate capabilities that shape the organizational forms in a way that relies on “cross-functional processes, extensive delayering and empowerment” (Foss 2005, p.12). This mechanism contributes to determine the absorptive capacity of the firm towards specific technologies and, in so doing, it also shape the technological trajectories along which the firm moves. After having recognized the growing importance of the firm’s organizational structure in the theoretical literature concerning the firm theory, the subsequent point of the analysis is that of providing an overview of the changes that have been occurred at micro level to the firm’s organization of production. The economic actors have to deal with challenges posed by processes of internationalisation and globalization, increased and increasing competitive pressure of less developed countries on low value added production activities, changes in technologies and increased environmental turbulence and volatility. As a consequence, it has been widely recognized that the main organizational models of production that fitted well in the 20th century are now partially inadequate and processes aiming to reorganize production activities have been widespread across several economies in recent years. Recently, the emergence of a “new” form of production organization has been proposed both by scholars, practitioners and institutions: the most prominent characteristic of such a model is its recognition of the importance of employees commitment and involvement. As a consequence it is characterized by a strong accent on the human resource management and on those practices that aim to widen the autonomy and responsibility of the workers as well as increasing their commitment to the organization (Osterman, 1994; 2000; Lynch, 2007). This “model” of production organization is by many defined as High Performance Work System (HPWS). Despite the increasing diffusion of workplace practices that may be inscribed within the concept of HPWS in western countries’ companies, it is an hazard, to some extent, to speak about the emergence of a “new organizational paradigm”. The discussion about organizational changes and the diffusion of HPWP the focus cannot abstract from a discussion about the industrial relations systems, with a particular accent on the employment relationships, because of their relevance, in the same way as production organization, in determining two major outcomes of the firm: innovation and economic performances. The argument is treated starting from the issue of the Social Dialogue at macro level, both in an European perspective and Italian perspective. The model of interaction between the social parties has repercussions, at micro level, on the employment relationships, that is to say on the relations between union delegates and management or workers and management. Finding economic and social policies capable of sustaining growth and employment within a knowledge based scenario is likely to constitute the major challenge for the next generation of social pacts, which are the main social dialogue outcomes. As Acocella and Leoni (2007) put forward the social pacts may constitute an instrument to trade wage moderation for high intensity in ICT, organizational and human capital investments. Empirical evidence, especially focused on the micro level, about the positive relation between economic growth and new organizational designs coupled with ICT adoption and non adversarial industrial relations is growing. Partnership among social parties may become an instrument to enhance firm competitiveness. The outcome of the discussion is the integration of organizational changes and industrial relations elements within a unified framework: the HPWS. Such a choice may help in disentangling the potential existence of complementarities between these two aspects of the firm internal structure on economic and innovative performance. With the third chapter starts the more original part of the thesis. The data utilized in order to disentangle the relations between HPWS practices, innovation and economic performance refer to the manufacturing firms of the Reggio Emilia province with more than 50 employees. The data have been collected through face to face interviews both to management (199 respondents) and to union representatives (181 respondents). Coupled with the cross section datasets a further data source is constituted by longitudinal balance sheets (1994-2004). Collecting reliable data that in turn provide reliable results needs always a great effort to which are connected uncertain results. Data at micro level are often subjected to a trade off: the wider is the geographical context to which the population surveyed belong the lesser is the amount of information usually collected (low level of resolution); the narrower is the focus on specific geographical context, the higher is the amount of information usually collected (high level of resolution). For the Italian case the evidence about the diffusion of HPWP and their effects on firm performances is still scanty and usually limited to local level studies (Cristini, et al., 2003). The thesis is also devoted to the deepening of an argument of particular interest: the existence of complementarities between the HPWS practices. It has been widely shown by empirical evidence that when HPWP are adopted in bundles they are more likely to impact on firm’s performances than when adopted in isolation (Ichniowski, Prennushi, Shaw, 1997). Is it true also for the local production system of Reggio Emilia? The empirical analysis has the precise aim of providing evidence on the relations between the HPWS dimensions and the innovative and economic performances of the firm. As far as the first line of analysis is concerned it must to be stressed the fundamental role that innovation plays in the economy (Geroski & Machin, 1993; Stoneman & Kwoon 1994, 1996; OECD, 2005; EC, 2002). On this point the evidence goes from the traditional innovations, usually approximated by R&D investment expenditure or number of patents, to the introduction and adoption of ICT, in the recent years (Brynjolfsson & Hitt, 2000). If innovation is important then it is critical to analyse its determinants. In this work it is hypothesised that organizational changes and firm level industrial relations/employment relations aspects that can be put under the heading of HPWS, influence the propensity to innovate in product, process and quality of the firm. The general argument may goes as follow: changes in production management and work organization reconfigure the absorptive capacity of the firm towards specific technologies and, in so doing, they shape the technological trajectories along which the firm moves; cooperative industrial relations may lead to smother adoption of innovations, because not contrasted by unions. From the first empirical chapter emerges that the different types of innovations seem to respond in different ways to the HPWS variables. The underlying processes of product, process and quality innovations are likely to answer to different firm’s strategies and needs. Nevertheless, it is possible to extract some general results in terms of the most influencing HPWS factors on innovative performance. The main three aspects are training coverage, employees involvement and the diffusion of bonuses. These variables show persistent and significant relations with all the three innovation types. The same do the components having such variables at their inside. In sum the aspects of the HPWS influence the propensity to innovate of the firm. At the same time, emerges a quite neat (although not always strong) evidence of complementarities presence between HPWS practices. In terns of the complementarity issue it can be said that some specific complementarities exist. Training activities, when adopted and managed in bundles, are related to the propensity to innovate. Having a sound skill base may be an element that enhances the firm’s capacity to innovate. It may enhance both the capacity to absorbe exogenous innovation and the capacity to endogenously develop innovations. The presence and diffusion of bonuses and the employees involvement also spur innovative propensity. The former because of their incentive nature and the latter because direct workers participation may increase workers commitment to the organizationa and thus their willingness to support and suggest inovations. The other line of analysis provides results on the relation between HPWS and economic performances of the firm. There have been a bulk of international empirical studies on the relation between organizational changes and economic performance (Black & Lynch 2001; Zwick 2004; Janod & Saint-Martin 2004; Huselid 1995; Huselid & Becker 1996; Cappelli & Neumark 2001), while the works aiming to capture the relations between economic performance and unions or industrial relations aspects are quite scant (Addison & Belfield, 2001; Pencavel, 2003; Machin & Stewart, 1990; Addison, 2005). In the empirical analysis the integration of the two main areas of the HPWS represent a scarcely exploited approach in the panorama of both national and international empirical studies. As remarked by Addison “although most analysis of workers representation and employee involvement/high performance work practices have been conducted in isolation – while sometimes including the other as controls – research is beginning to consider their interactions” (Addison, 2005, p.407). The analysis conducted exploiting temporal lags between dependent and covariates, possibility given by the merger of cross section and panel data, provides evidence in favour of the existence of HPWS practices impact on firm’s economic performance, differently measured. Although it does not seem to emerge robust evidence on the existence of complementarities among HPWS aspects on performances there is evidence of a general positive influence of the single practices. The results are quite sensible to the time lags, inducing to hypothesize that time varying heterogeneity is an important factor in determining the impact of organizational changes on economic performance. The implications of the analysis can be of help both to management and local level policy makers. Although the results are not simply extendible to other local production systems it may be argued that for contexts similar to the Reggio Emilia province, characterized by the presence of small and medium enterprises organized in districts and by a deep rooted unionism, with strong supporting institutions, the results and the implications here obtained can also fit well. However, a hope for future researches on the subject treated in the present work is that of collecting good quality information over wider geographical areas, possibly at national level, and repeated in time. Only in this way it is possible to solve the Gordian knot about the linkages between innovation, performance, high performance work practices and industrial relations.

Case Study of an Ergonomics Training Program for Nursing Home Workers

This paper describes a case study of a labor-based ergonomics-training program that makes use of some effective worker training methods. The program focus was on ergonomics awareness and back injury prevention for nursing home workers. It was developed and conducted by a not-for-profit organization affiliated with the Service Employees International Union. Training methods included the train-the-trainer model and the small group activity method. The investigation also compared the program components with those identified by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) as being key elements in effective safety training.

Monopsony Power, Pay Structure and Training

Although interest in monopsonistic influences on labor market outcomes has revived in recent years, only a few empirical studies provide direct evidence on this topic. In this article, the authors analyze the effect of monopsony power on pay structure, using a direct measure of labor market thinness. The authors find evidence of monopsony power, as firms facing fewer local competitors offer lower wages to skilled labor and trainees, but not to unskilled labor. The findings have important implications for the economic theory of training, as most recent models assume monopsonistic pay-setting for skilled labor, but not for trainees.

Interactive Graphic Simulation: An Advanced Methodology to Improve the Teaching-Learning Process in Nuclear Engineering Education and Training

Nowadays, computer simulators are becoming basic tools for education and training in many engineering fields. In the nuclear industry, the role of simulation for training of operators of nuclear power plants is also recognized of the utmost relevance. As an example, the International Atomic Energy Agency sponsors the development of nuclear reactor simulators for education, and arranges the supply of such simulation programs. Aware of this, in 2008 Gas Natural Fenosa, a Spanish gas and electric utility that owns and operate nuclear power plants and promotes university education in the nuclear technology field, provided the Department of Nuclear Engineering of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid with the Interactive Graphic Simulator (IGS) of “José Cabrera” (Zorita) nuclear power plant, an industrial facility whose commercial operation ceased definitively in April 2006. It is a state-of-the-art full-scope real-time simulator that was used for training and qualification of the operators of the plant control room, as well as to understand and analyses the plant dynamics, and to develop, qualify and validate its emergency operating procedures.

Analyzing training dependencies and posterior fusion in discriminant classification of apnoea patients based on sustained and connected speech

We present a novel approach using both sustained vowels and connected speech, to detect obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) cases within a homogeneous group of speakers. The proposed scheme is based on state-of-the-art GMM-based classifiers, and acknowledges specifically the way in which acoustic models are trained on standard databases, as well as the complexity of the resulting models and their adaptation to specific data. Our experimental database contains a suitable number of utterances and sustained speech from healthy (i.e control) and OSA Spanish speakers. Finally, a 25.1% relative reduction in classification error is achieved when fusing continuous and sustained speech classifiers. Index Terms: obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), gaussian mixture models (GMMs), background model (BM), classifier fusion.

Design of a training tool for improving the use of hand-held detectors in humanitarian demining

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce the design of a training tool intended to improve deminers' technique during close-in detection tasks. Design/methodology/approach – Following an introduction that highlights the impact of mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and the importance of training for enhancing the safety and the efficiency of the deminers, this paper considers the utilization of a sensory tracking system to study the skill of the hand-held detector expert operators. With the compiled information, some critical performance variables can be extracted, assessed, and quantified, so that they can be used afterwards as reference values for the training task. In a second stage, the sensory tracking system is used for analysing the trainee skills. The experimentation phase aims to test the effectiveness of the elements that compose the sensory system to track the hand-held detector during the training sessions. Findings – The proposed training tool will be able to evaluate the deminers' efficiency during the scanning tasks and will provide important information for improving their competences. Originality/value – This paper highlights the need of introducing emerging technologies for enhancing the current training techniques for deminers and proposes a sensory tracking system that can be successfully utilised for evaluating trainees' performance with hand-held detectors.

Diseño de instrumentos para configurar una política industrial en España basada en los postulados de la economía evolutiva

La evidencia empírica aplicada a países de cierto tamaño y desarrollo económico, muestra que existe una relación directa y positiva entre la intensidad de la industria manufacturera, medida como porcentaje de su PIB, y ciertas variables económicas como, el crecimiento, el desempleo y la balanza exterior de bienes y servicios. En el caso de esta última, se verifica empíricamente, que los países con una proporción de actividad manufacturera inferior al 20%, tienen una marcada tendencia a presentar déficits crónicos de balanza de bienes y servicios, lo que conduce a persistentes déficits por cuenta corriente, al ser el primer déficit el principal componente del segundo. Esto trae consigo un continuado incremento del endeudamiento externo que no cesa, y que terminará en algún momento por desequilibrar el conjunto de la economía de los países con esos déficits crónicos. Las anteriores conclusiones, abren una vía de orientación de la política económica, que tiene como objetivo la promoción de la industria manufacturera de cada país. Y esto es un hecho ya en 2014. Países relevantes, como Alemania o Francia en la UE, incluso los EEUU y últimamente el Reino Unido, y por supuesto países del área asiática como Japón, Corea del Sur y China, llevan años promoviendo su industria manufacturera. Resulta significativo, que el debate ideológico sobre la bondad de la aplicación política industrial por parte de los gobiernos, frente a las teorías liberales de mantener a los poderes públicos lejos de ese tipo de actividades, haya dado paso a un modelo generalizado de corte más bien horizontal, donde los países casi sin excepciones apoyan el desarrollo de sus empresas con numerosos instrumentos, que van bastante más lejos de los habituales de I+D. Se valora por tanto, la industria manufacturera como algo vital para el equilibrio económico. Incluso la UE, defensora durante décadas de la no intervención de los diferentes Estados miembros en actividades de promoción industrial más allá del apoyo a las actividades de I+D, realiza un giro copernicano, que termina en 2012 proclamando que la industria manufacturera es vital para el equilibrio económico de la UE, que hay que promoverla, e incluso marca un objetivo, precisamente del 20%, como contribución manufacturera a su PIB. Es decir, se da por asumido que los servicios no son un sustituto indefinido de la industria y que por tanto tienen un límite, lo que se contrapone frontalmente contra la anterior creencia de que el aumento de la participación de los servicios en la economía, no solo era bueno, sino un síntoma de desarrollo. Esta premisa ya ha dejado de ser cierta para esos y otros países. En cambio, en España nada de esto sucede en las dos últimas décadas, sino que la industria manufacturera no recibe especial atención de los poderes públicos y se desliza en una pendiente de disminución de su contribución al PIB, que incluso se acelera con la crisis económica que comienza en 2007, hasta alcanzar cifras del orden del 12% del PIB en 2013. La política económica que se aplica es la de la deflación de costes, con los efectos consecuentes sobre los salarios y sobre la capacidad de la economía de generar riqueza. Se apuesta por un modelo de mano de obra barata, que recuerda al de los años 60. Como indicador relevante de esta situación, lo que exporta la industria manufacturera española, no ha ganado en contenido tecnológico en los últimos quince años. Esta situación se ve empeorada por un hecho significativo adicional, y es que casi el 40% de las ventas de la industria manufacturera española provienen de empresas de propiedad extranjera, con lo que eso supone por una parte de dependencia tecnológica del exterior como en el caso del automóvil, y de incertidumbre sobre su futuro, al estar basadas en el mantenimiento en el futuro de una mano de obra barata, que frenará que los españoles que trabajan en esas empresas, progresen económicamente. La propuesta de esta Tesis, es en cambio apostar por un modelo de crecimiento para España que tenga como uno de sus pilares el desarrollo de una industria manufacturera sólida y con cada vez mayor contenido tecnológico. Para ello, se propone un Plan de política industrial, donde se incluye la creación de actores impulsores de este plan, que deben ser del máximo nivel político. Si los diferentes gobiernos no entienden y asumen esta necesidad de apoyo a la industria a largo plazo e independiente de los cambios políticos, no será posible llevar a cabo este Plan. Para su puesta en marcha, se propone la creación o refuerzo de numerosos instrumentos de apoyo a la industria manufacturera de carácter fundamentalmente horizontal que van mucho más allá de los habituales del I+D, y que en varios casos, tienen una clara semejanza con otros existentes ya en otros países desarrollados desde hace años. La promoción de la industria manufacturera necesita nuevos instrumentos, como una financiación a largo plazo para las empresas, una promoción ordenada y eficaz de la actividad internacional de las empresas exportadoras, la mayoría de las cuales exportan productos manufacturados, una educación y formación profesional que esté alineada con estos objetivos, unos instrumentos que apoyen en especial el desarrollo la industria manufacturera, o la participación minoritaria pero significativa, del Estado en empresas españolas pertenecientes a sectores estratégicos entre otros. En resumen, esta Tesis propone una alternativa de política económica radicalmente diferente a la de dejar la industria manufacturera española a su suerte, y basar el futuro económico de España en una mano de obra barata. ABSTRACT The empirical evidence, applied to countries of certain size and economic development, shows that there exists a direct and positive relationship between industrial manufacturing activity, measured as a percentage of GDP, and certain economic variables, such as growth, unemployment and the foreign balance of trade. In the case of the latter, it is verified empirically that the countries with a percentage of manufacturing activity below 20% have a marked tendency for chronic deficits of the balance of trade, leading to persistent deficits in the current account, being that the former deficit is the main component of the latter. This brings about a continued increase in foreign debt that does not cease, and that will end at some point by disrupting the economy of the countries with these chronic deficits. The previous conclusions open the way to a new direction for economic policy, which promotes industrial manufacturing in each country. This is already a fact in 2014. Relevant countries, such as Germany or France in the EU, even the US and ultimately the UK, and of course countries of East Asia such as Japan, South Korea and China, have been promoting their industrial manufacturing for years. It becomes significant that the ideological debate about the goodwill of the application of industrial policy by governments, against liberal theories that maintain public powers far from these kinds of activities, has taken a step towards a horizontal-cut generalized model, where countries, with almost no exception, rely on various instruments to develop their companies that go much further than the usual R&D. Industrial manufacture is therefore valued as vital for economic stability. Even the EU, proponent for decades of non-intervention policy that goes beyond R&D, has gone full circle, ending in 2012 by proclaiming that industrial manufacture is vital for the economic stability of the EU, that it must be promoted. They even mark precisely 20% as an objective for manufacturing as a percentage of GDP. In other words, it is a given that services are not an indefinite substitute for industry, and that therefore it has a limit as such. This rejects the notion that the increase in services at the cost of manufacture is not only healthy, but is also a symptom of development. This premise is no longer true for these and other countries. On the other hand, none of this happens in Spain, where industrial manufacture receives no special attention from the public authorities, and it slides on a downward slope of percentage contribution to GDP, which accelerates the economic crisis that begins in 2007, until manufacture reaches values of around 12% of GDP in 2013. The economic policy applied is that of cost deflation, with consequential effects on wages and the capacity of the economy to generate wealth. A model is proposed for cheaper labor, akin to that of the 1960s. As a relevant indicator of this situation, manufacturing exports from Spain have not grown technologically in the last 15 years. The situation is made worse by another significant fact: almost 40% of sales of the manufacturing industry originate from companies of foreign origin, which supposes on one hand a technological dependence on foreign countries, such as in the case of the automotive industry, and on the other hand uncertainty in its future, being that they are based on maintaining cheap labor in the future, which will slow economic progress of Spaniards working in these companies. The proposition of this Thesis is to bet on a growth model for Spain that has as one of its pillars the development of a solid manufacturing industry, with increasing technological content. For this, an industrial policy plan is proposed, which includes the creation of driving agents for this plan, which must be of maximum political level. If the various governments don’t understand and assume this necessity for support of industry in the long term, independent of political change, this plan will not be accomplished. To start it, the creation or reinforcement of numerous instruments to promote the manufacturing activities are proposed, with a fundamentally horizontal nature that goes far beyond the usual R&D, and that, in several cases, have a clear similarity with others existing in other countries, having been developed for years. The promotion of the manufacturing industry needs new instruments, such as the long-term financing of companies, an orderly and efficient promotion of international activity of exporting companies, the most of which export manufactured goods, education and professional training which is in tune with these objectives, some instruments which support in particular the development of the manufacturing industry, or the minor yet significant participation of the State in Spanish companies belonging to strategic sectors, among others. In summary, this Thesis proposes an different alternative to the economic policy of leaving the manufacturing industry of Spain to its chances, and to base the economic future of Spain on a cheaper labor force.