| Abstract: |
Specialized knowledge-generating jobs comprise close to one fifth of
employment and one fourth of the wage bill in French manufacturing firms. They
are positioned high in the firm hierarchy, horizontally aside upper-tier
managers but are not managerial in nature. This escapes the patterns implied
by the hierarchy view of the firm. Conditioning on firm size and shares of
management workers, their higher shares in employment at the firm level are
correlated with more innovation and intangible capital, greater product
complexity, higher revenue and quantity total factor productivity and
profitability. This suggests that firms use specialized knowledge workers to
generate within-firm knowledge and create firm capabilities. Consistently, we
model firms as organizations where efficient production of higher-value added,
complex goods requires information acquisition by within-firm knowledge
workers to develop capabilities beyond those created by management and
hierarchies. |