Technological Change, Complementarity and Coordination

Technological change is seen as an important driver of employment and wage polarisation, because it changes the relative demand for different types of skills. However, a different way to characterise the role of technological change in the labour market is that it changes the bargaining position of workers, not only vis-a-vis their employers, but also one another. This draws attention to teamwork and the way that technology changes the division of labour within teams and across organisations and cities. Building on this insight, I will first discuss the role of co-worker complementarity in wages and wage premiums and then turn to a case study of how the organisational innovations that helped coordinate inventor teams in the 1920s had dramatic consequences for the workings and geography of the innovation system of the USA.