Labor Economics Commons^™

Opting For Innovation: Selecting Highly Skilled Workers As A Competitive Strategy In The Jamaican Economy, Patrick Leon Mason

Patrick L. Mason

This paper empirically examines the relationship between a firm’s financial success and its innovation strategy, that is, how it utilizes or does not utilize professional service workers and researchers. Our empirical analysis uses a survey administered during 2006 to 324 Jamaican business and governmental organizations. We empirically investigate two questions: 1) what factors determine a firm’s innovation strategy; and, 2) which innovation strategies increase the financial success of firms. We find that sets of critical economic factors, alternatively group as market factors, human resource factors, production/service delivery factors, and other factors, are important determinants of the competitive strategy of Jamaican …