High skilled workplaces, technological change and employment: Can educational reform do it?

• Technology-related changes in work processes often led to the destruction of jobs at the firm level, even in the short-term. • Organisational human capital and skills are not a barrier to labour substitution. As such, supply-side strategies based on educational reform are unlikely to provide strong protection against automation by themselves. • Business strategies are important in mediating the relationship between the introduction of technological change and job reduction. • Management perceptions on workforce commitment and competence, can also protect workers against the introduction of labour replacing technology. • Attention to the social relations and the labour process, and not only to the limits of technological possibilities or economic calculations, is required when analysing the future of work. Human capital, and related theories such as skills biased technological change, argue that skills development is a central strategy for individuals to succeed in an increasingly global and digitalised labour market. One of the main shortcomings of these theories, however, is their focus on the individual and their detachment from the organisational context in which workers operate and deploy their skills. In this article, we incorporate this context in the analysis, and explore the importance of the company characteristics in sheltering workers from unemployment when technological change occurs in their firm, using rich establishment-level data. Our results suggest that 'high-skilled' workplaces do not protect workers against automation. By contrast, the results point to the importance of companies' competitive strategies and management perceptions in sheltering workers from automation. The findings underline the relevance of social relations in the analysis of the future of work, and question accounts that focus exclusively on skills and educational reform to protect workers and create inclusive labour markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]