Assuring SME’s Sustainable Competitiveness in the Digital Era: A Labor Policy between Guaranteed Minimum Wage and ICT Skill Mismatch

• Main Authors: Alexandru Avram, Marco Benvenuto, Costin Daniel Avram, Ginevra Gravili
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019-05-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: ICT skills mismatch; guaranteed minimum wage; SME’s sustainable competitiveness; employment; public policies
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/10/2918

The aim of this paper is to analyze the real impact of ICT (Information and Communications Technology) skills mismatch on SME’s (small and medium enterprises) sustainable competitiveness in the presence of a guaranteed minimum wage. As part of public policies—the minimum wage needs to maintain a balance between increasing employment and not being a burden for the companies, leading them to bankruptcies, especially in times of disruptive change, in which economies have to be more resilient. The rapid progress in information and communication technologies has dramatically redefined rising unemployment as a result of skills mismatch. This paper aims to understand, on the one hand, whether there is a match between the supply demand of ICT skills, and how increasingly powerful digital technologies affect the skills, jobs, and demand for human labor. On the other hand, it aims to understand whether increasing productivity and a fair minimum wage could be an integrated approach for stimulating SME’s in increasing sustainable competitiveness.