Blocking the low road, paving the high road? The role of industrial relations and investments in knowledge-based capital for export specialisation trajectories in services

While in the Fordist era industrial relations institutions had been pivotal in fueling growth in manufacturing, their ability to adapt and support an increasingly service-led knowledge economy has been questioned.

Using the OECD’s Trade in Value Added dataset, we test how variables that are tied respectively to industrial relations and to education and R&D are connected to export specialisation in less knowledge-intensive services (LKIS) and knowledge-intensive services (KIS). Our regression analysis reveals that lower levels of coordination in industrial relations are associated with higher value added in export shares in the LKIS sector while the effect of these institutions on the KIS sector is mostly neutral. Our analysis finds that investments in knowledge-based capital drive growth in KIS exports, regardless of existing industrial relations institutions. We conclude that coordinated industrial relations institutions block the ‘low road’ of export specialisation while investments in knowledge-based capital pave the ‘high road’ in services.

Meet our speaker

Chiara Benassi is Associate Professor in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Bologna and a Senior Visiting Fellow at King’s Business School, King’s College London. Her research focuses on comparative human resource management and employment relations, examining how national institutions and political-economic conditions shape corporate strategies in areas such as flexibility, training and collective bargaining.

She previously held academic positions at King’s College London, Royal Holloway University of London, and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, and has been a visiting scholar at leading European universities. Her work has been published in top international journals and supported by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Hans Böckler Foundation.

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