IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/upj/weupjo/22-371.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Centering Work: Integration and Diffusion of Workforce Development within the U.S. Manufacturing Extension Network

Author

Listed:
  • Nichola Lowe

    (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

  • Greg Schrock

    (Portland State University)

  • Matthew D. Wilson

    (Great Cities Institute, University of Illinois Chicago)

  • Rumana Rabbani

    (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

  • Allison Forbes

    (Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness)

Abstract

As the U.S. economy rebounds from the COVID-19 pandemic, strategies that promote long-term transformation toward high-quality jobs will be critical. This includes workplace-improving interventions that enable employers to upgrade existing jobs, often while enhancing their own competitive position. This paper focuses on the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, a national network of federally funded centers that support small and medium-sized manufacturing firms. We document the range of workforce- and workplace-enhancing strategies that MEP centers have adopted since the network’s inception in the mid-1990s. While workforce development is unevenly implemented across today’s MEP network, leading centers within the network are devising transformative strategies that shape underlying business practices in ways that can improve the quality of front-line manufacturing jobs. The pandemic recovery, along with federal commitment to reenergize domestic supply chains, presents an opportunity to establish NIST-MEP as a national workforce-development leader while also strengthening localized institutional partnerships to center that effort on inclusive economic development and recovery.

Suggested Citation

  • Nichola Lowe & Greg Schrock & Matthew D. Wilson & Rumana Rabbani & Allison Forbes, 2022. "Centering Work: Integration and Diffusion of Workforce Development within the U.S. Manufacturing Extension Network," Upjohn Working Papers 22-371, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:upj:weupjo:22-371
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1390&context=up_workingpapers
    Download Restriction: All working papers are copyrighted.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Edwin Melendez & Bennett Harrison, 1998. "Matching the Disadvantaged to Job Opportunities: Structural Explanations for the Past Successes of the Center for Employment Training," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 12(1), pages 3-11, February.
    2. Berger, Suzanne with the MIT Task Force on Production in the Innovation Economy, 2013. "Making in America: From Innovation to Market," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262019914, December.
    3. David H. Autor & Frank Levy & Richard J. Murnane, 2003. "The skill content of recent technological change: an empirical exploration," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Nov.
    4. Sabel, Charles F., 1996. "A measure of federalism: assessing manufacturing technology centers," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 281-307, March.
    5. Shapira, Philip, 2001. "US manufacturing extension partnerships: technology policy reinvented?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 977-992, June.
    6. Elsie Harper-Anderson, 2008. "Measuring the Connection Between Workforce Development and Economic Development," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 22(2), pages 119-135, May.
    7. Philipp Brandt & Andrew Schrank & Josh Whitford, 2018. "Brokerage and Boots on the Ground: Complements or Substitutes in the Manufacturing Extension Partnerships?," Post-Print hal-03129804, HAL.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cathy Yang Liu & Marc Doussard & Nichola Lowe, 2023. "Fixing Work, and Moving Beyond It," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 37(1), pages 64-72, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nichola Lowe & Greg Schrock & Matthew D. Wilson & Rumana Rabbani & Allison Forbes, 2023. "Centering Work: Integration and Diffusion of Workforce Development Within the U.S. Manufacturing Extension Network," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 37(4), pages 375-388, November.
    2. Nichola Lowe & Greg Schrock & Ranita Jain & Maureen Conway, 2021. "Genesis at work: Advancing inclusive innovation through manufacturing extension," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 36(3), pages 224-241, May.
    3. Matthias Firgo & Peter Mayerhofer, 2015. "Wissensintensive Unternehmensdienste, Wissens-Spillovers und regionales Wachstum. Teilprojekt 1: Wissens-Spillovers und regionale Entwicklung – Welche strukturpolitische Ausrichtung optimiert das Wach," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 58342, August.
    4. Greg Schrock, 2013. "Reworking Workforce Development," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 27(3), pages 163-178, August.
    5. Matthias Firgo & Peter Mayerhofer, 2015. "Wissens-Spillovers und regionale Entwicklung - welche strukturpolitische Ausrichtung optimiert des Wachstum?," Working Paper Reihe der AK Wien - Materialien zu Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft 144, Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien, Abteilung Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Statistik.
    6. Tommaso AGASISTI & Geraint JOHNES & Marco PACCAGNELLA, 2021. "Tasks, occupations and wages in OECD countries," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 160(1), pages 85-112, March.
    7. Katrin Huber & Geske Rolvering, 2023. "Public child care and mothers’ career trajectories," Working Papers 228, Bavarian Graduate Program in Economics (BGPE).
    8. Loebbing, Jonas, 2018. "An Elementary Theory of Endogenous Technical Change and Wage Inequality," VfS Annual Conference 2018 (Freiburg, Breisgau): Digital Economy 181603, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    9. J. Bradford Jensen & Lori G. Kletzer, 2010. "Measuring Tradable Services and the Task Content of Offshorable Services Jobs," NBER Chapters, in: Labor in the New Economy, pages 309-335, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Aleksandra Parteka & Joanna Wolszczak-Derlacz, 2020. "Wage response to global production links: evidence for workers from 28 European countries (2005–2014)," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 156(4), pages 769-801, November.
    11. Bhorat, Haroon & Goga, Sumayya & Stanwix, Benjamin, 2014. "Skills-biased labour demand and the pursuit of inclusive growth in South Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series 130, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    12. Ying Zhang & Yingli Huang, 2023. "Killing Two Birds with One Stone or Missing One of Them? The Synergistic Governance Effect of China’s Carbon Emissions Trading Scheme on Pollution Control and Carbon Emission Reduction," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(13), pages 1-25, June.
    13. Battisti, Michele & Gatto, Massimo Del & Parmeter, Christopher F., 2022. "Skill-biased technical change and labor market inefficiency," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    14. Shigeru Fujita & Madison Perry, 2024. "Nonworking Parents or Hungry Children," Economic Insights, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, vol. 9(4), pages 2-9, December.
    15. Holmes, Craig & Mayhew, Ken, 2015. "Have UK Earnings Distributions Polarised?," INET Oxford Working Papers 2015-02, Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford.
    16. Hamid Boustanifar & Everett Grant & Ariell Reshef, 2018. "Wages and Human Capital in Finance: International Evidence, 1970–2011 [Financial reform: what shakes it? What shapes it?]," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 22(2), pages 699-745.
    17. Antje Mertens & Laura Romeu-Gordo, 2023. "Retirement in Western Germany – How Workplace Tasks Influence Its Timing," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 37(2), pages 467-485, April.
    18. Tschopp, Jeanne, 2015. "The Wage Response to Shocks: The Role of Inter-Occupational Labour Adjustment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 28-37.
    19. Lütkenhorst, Wilfried, 2018. "Creating wealth without labour? Emerging contours of a new techno-economic landscape," IDOS Discussion Papers 11/2018, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).
    20. Hilal Atasoy & Rajiv D. Banker & Paul A. Pavlou, 2016. "On the Longitudinal Effects of IT Use on Firm-Level Employment," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 27(1), pages 6-26, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Industrial policy; industry studies; economic development policy; workforce development policy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L6 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Manufacturing
    • R11 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes
    • J81 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Standards - - - Working Conditions

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:upj:weupjo:22-371. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/upjohus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.