• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.49-75
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• 2003

This paper empirically examines multiskill formation as a critical mechanism of human capital accumulation within the firm. We investigate various factors that foster multiskill formation of the employees at the workplace. We also investigate whether and how multiskill formation of the employees, in tum, affect the labor productivity. Our empirical results are summarized as the following. First, skills of the employees are developed along the sequential path rather than the parallel path. They evolve from the simple-skill to the single-skill, and then to the multi-skill state. Second, multi skilling is stimulated by uncertainty factors of the environment and various human resource management practices such as mutual learning among workers, workers' participation in decision making, and job rotation. Third, the increase in the ratio of multiskilled workers in the firm has a positive impact on the growth of the firm's labor productivity. Our analyses show that the labor productivity growth increases by 0.019 with the increase in multi skilling ratio by 0.1. Fourth, uncertainty and human resource management practices had an indirect impact on labor productivity growth only through multiskilling. These results strongly indicate that multiskilling is a result of human capital accumulation fostered by various human resource management practices.