Date
13-14 September 2018 

Venue
Room 115, Jubilee Building
Science Policy Research Unit
School of Business, Management and Economics
University of Sussex
Falmer
Brighton
BN1 9RH
UK

Following successful previous ENEF meetings organised in Sheffield, Rotterdam, Nice-Sophia Antipolis, Cambridge, Paris, Amsterdam, Strasbourg, Bologna, Madrid, Manchester, Toulouse, Turin and Pisa, we are pleased to announce that the 15th ENEF meeting will be held in Brighton at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex.

The theme of this year’s meeting reflects core themes of ENEF and SPRU’s long-standing tradition in peering into the socio-economic challenges raised by looming technological revolutions. One of the most pressing challenges today for firms, their employees, and policy makers alike is the “fourth industrial revolution”. In this context, this edition of ENEF aims to bring together scholars to discuss the impact of robotisation, digital transformations and artificial intelligence on firm organisation, and what this implies for employment, productivity, market concentration, and industrial dynamics. The interplay between technological change, firm behaviour and industry dynamics has long been investigated in both theoretical and empirical literature. Recently, increasing interest in the economic literature on the effects of new forms of technological transformations, has called for more data and research to understand which firms develop new (4.0) technologies, which firms adopt them, and how these are changing the firm’s organisation and the work content.

Keeping the approach of previous ENEF workshops, we welcome submissions from all areas of economics focusing on the firm, innovation, and employment, as well as relevant contributions from management, organisation science and political economy.

The workshop will focus on empirical, theoretical and policy analysis of topics that are related to robotisation, digital transformations and artificial intelligence (or the fourth industrial revolution more in general) and:

• Firm organisation, division of labour and tasks
• Industry organisation, market concentration, superstar firms, and industrial dynamics
• Determinants and effects of automation and AI at the firm and industry level
• Employment and wage dynamics
• Organisational characteristics and employment restructuring
• The role of exporting and importing activities and tasks
• Reshoring of production and organisation of GVC more in general
• Firms collaboration and networks
• The effects of automation and robots on firm performance 
  
  

ENEF coordinator

Michael Dietrich, University of Sheffield.

Local organisers

Tommaso Ciarli, Alberto Marzucchi, Luigi Orsenigo, Maria Savona, Josh Siepel, Ella Strickland de Souza, Simone Vannuccini