The adoption of digital technologies: Investment, skills, work organisation.

• Focus on new digital technologies: very uneven diffusion among Italian firms displaying different adoption behaviours. • Analysis of the technology adoption choices made by individual firms exploring the nexus between technology, skills and the organisation of work. • Application of probit and zero inflated poisson models to estimate the probability of introducing at least one technology and the total number of new digital technologies. • In continuity with previous studies of ICTs: strong complementarities between skills and new technologies. • Results point to the importance of knowledge accumulation embodied in firm employees and techno-organizational capabilities of firms. New digital technologies are shaping the transformation of production activities. This process of change is characterised by growing digitization, inter-connectivity and automation. The diffusion of new technologies is, however, very uneven, and firms display different adoption behaviours. By using data on a representative sample of Italian firms, we explore the patterns and determinants of new digital technology adoption. We build our theoretical framework on the nexus between technology, skills and the organisation of work. We then provide novel econometric evidence on the positive effects of education and training. Among the notable results of the paper, labour flexibility does not seem to favour new technology adoption, whereas second-level collective bargaining plays a positive role in the process. Results also show heterogeneous effects between large vs. small and medium-size firms, and between manufacturing and service sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]