Technological Progress, Organizational Change and the Size of the Human Resources Department∗

Innovative workplace practices based on multi-tasking and ICT that have been diffusing in most OECD countries since the 1990s have strong conse-quences on working conditions. Available data show together with the emer-gence of new organizational forms like multi-tasking, the increase in the pro-portion of workers employed in managerial occupation and the increase in skill requirements. This paper proposes a theoretical model to analyze the optimal number of tasks per worker when switching to multi-tasking raises coordination costs between workers and between tasks. Firms can reduce coordination costs by assigning more workers to human resources manage-ment. Human capital is endogenously accumulated by workers. The model reproduces pretty well the regularities observed in the data. In particular, ex-ogenous technological accelerations tend to increase both the number of tasks performed and the skill requirements, and to raise the fraction of workers de-voted to management