Are new work practices and new technologies biased against immigrant workers?
By: by Michael Rosholm, Marianne Roed, Pal Schone
Contributors: Roed, Marianne
Series: Discussion paper -- no. 2135; Discussion paper (Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit : Online) -- no. 2135
Publisher: IZA
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Bonn, Germany
Language: eng
Format: [electronic resource] /
Subjects: Immigrants; Economic conditions; Technological innovations; Work
Description: "New technologies and new work practices have been introduced and implemented over a broad range in the production process in most advanced industrialised countries during the last two decades. New work organisation practices like team organisation and job rotation require interpersonal communication to a larger extent compared to the traditional assembly line types of production. In addition to handling the formal language, communication in this respect includes country-specific skills related to understanding social and cultural codes, unwritten rules, implicit communication, norms etc. In this paper we analyse whether these developments -- by increasing the importance of communication and informal human capital -- have had a negative effect on employment opportunities of immigrants. The results show that firms that use PCs intensively and firms that give their employees broad autonomy employ fewer non-Western immigrants who have not been raised in Norway (i.e. arrived as adults). Furthermore, the negative relationships are especially strong for low-skilled non-Western immigrants. These results may add support to the hypothesis stating that new technologies and (some) new work practices are biased against non-Western immigrant workers, and especially those with low formal skills"--Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit web site.
Notes: Title from PDF file as viewed on 5/19/2006.

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