abstract
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The growth in micro-technologies and their widespread diffusion across economic sectors have given rise to what is often described as a New Economy - an economy in which competitive prospects are closely aligned with the firm's innovation and technology practices, and its use of skilled workers. Training is one strategy that many firms undertake in order to improve the quality of their workforce.
This study contributes to the expanding body of research in the area of information and communication technologies (ICT). Using data on business sector workplaces from the 1999 Workplace and Employee Survey (WES), we investigate factors related to the incidence and intensity of training. The study focuses on whether training incidence and training intensity are more closely associated with the technological competencies of specific workplaces than with membership in ICT and science-based industry environments. The study finds that training incidence depends more on the technological competencies exhibited by individual workplaces. Among workplaces that decide to train, these technological competencies are also important determinants of the intensity of training.
Workplaces which score highly on our index of technological competency are over three times more likely to train than those that rank zero on the competency index. The size of the workplace is also a factor. Large and medium-sized workplaces are 3 and 2.3 times more likely to train than small workplaces, respectively. And workplaces with higher-skilled workforces are more likely to train than workplaces with lower-skilled workforces.
For workplaces that choose to train, their technological competency is the main determinant of training intensity. The size of the workplace, the average cost of training, and the skill level of the workforce are also influential factors'but to a lesser extent. Other factors, such as sector, outside sources of funding, and unionization status, are not influential factors in determining the intensity of training. Workplaces that have a higher average cost of training train fewer employees as a proportion of their workforce. However, the skill level of their employees moderates this effect, because as payroll-per-employee increases (a proxy for worker skills), plants train more.