Innovation and Human Resources: Migration Flows and Employment Protection

The aim of this report is to conceptualise and compile the existing evidence on the impact of high skill international migration policies and labour legislation on innovation.This report considers the role of high skill international migration policies and labour legislation on innovation. These are areas where regulatory and juridical frameworks have evolved through highly complex country specific sets of arrangements that encompass judicial law, regulatory mechanisms, collective bargaining and custom and practice. Such systems, although impacting on labour markets and human resources, have not, historically, been designed with innovation in mind, in the sense of explicitly supporting innovative capacity at either the national, regional or the firm level. There is now, however, increasing interest in understanding the impact of EPL to innovation processes and how such understanding might illuminate specific and general innovation policy instruments. In the case of migration although the migration-innovation linkage is not yet clearly understood, and consequently is not yet embedded in innovation policy instruments, we are seeing the emergence of competitive immigration regimes as tools to enhance national competitiveness in the global economy. At the heart of both areas are people – human resources - and social equity and welfare issues that may not be easily reconciled with policies aimed at ensuring the smooth operation of innovation processes at the firm level. The report present findings in both areas