Human resource development, domains of information technology use, and levels of economic prosperity

Abstract

We report on a research model that was developed and tested to empirically investigate the associations of education quality, on-the-job training, the maturity of information and communications technology (ICT) use by individuals, businesses and governments, and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita across 122 countries. Overall, the findings indicate that education quality is positively associated with GDP per capita, while on-the-job training is not. Education quality is positively associated with ICT use by individuals and governments, but weakly with ICT use by business. On-the-job training, however, is positively associated with all three domains of ICT use. We then separately analyze countries with higher and lower levels of GDP per capita and find both similarities and differences. Healthy composite reliabilities and R²s are obtained in all analyses. The research model, its analysis, and discussion of the results are presented. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Keywords:

• human capital
• information technology
• economic development