In this hybrid research seminar on Thursday May 7, 2026 at 11:00 am by Professor Elena Cefis— will present her research titled "Organisational Capabilities, Digitalisation, and Labour Productivity ".
Abstract:
This paper investigates whether organisational capabilities condition the productivity returns to digitalisation across European sectors. Using a balanced country×sector×year panel of 8,651 observations covering 21 European countries, 51 NACE Rev. 2 sectors, and the period 2010–2023, we combine a sector-level Digital Intensity Index — constructed as the first principal component of five Eurostat ICT variables — with the organisational capability taxonomy of Costa et al. (2023), which distinguishes four empirically distinct profiles: Essential, Managerial, Interdependent, and Complex. We estimate the moderating role of organisational capabilities through pooled OLS with country and year fixed effects, quantile regression, and a leave-one-out shift-share instrumental variable strategy to address the endogeneity of digital adoption. Three results emerge. First, Complex capabilities — associated with adaptive learning, innovation management, and talent development — significantly amplify the productivity gains from digitalisation. Second, this complementarity is heterogeneous along the productivity distribution: it is strongest among lower-productivity sectors and attenuates monotonically toward the frontier, suggesting that digitalisation combined with Complex capabilities operates primarily as a catch-up mechanism. Third, Interdependent capabilities weaken the digitalisation–productivity nexus, with the negative interaction becoming more pronounced among higher-productivity sectors, consistent with the argument that tightly coupled coordination structures become sources of rigidity under digital transformation. These findings imply that the returns to digital investment depend critically on the organisational architecture of production, and that effective digital transition policies must account for the heterogeneity of sectoral capability endowments.
The zoom link to join the seminar online can be found here. This event is open to the public; all those interested in this topic are very welcome to attend. After the presentation there will be time for questions and discussion.
For any queries related to our UNU-MERIT Seminar Series, please contact Lizeth Melissa Molina Alvarez and Karthika Baby Sujatha by sending an email to seminars@merit.unu.edu.
