Abstract—Learning can be analyzed at the individual level
in addition to firm’slevel.But,with a closer look, learning by
firms depends on the composition of employees which can be
apart in terms ofeducational levels. In Iran, educational level
of manufacturing firms is divided to seven groups,
includingilliterate, not holding high school diploma, holding
high school diploma, associate, bachelor, master and doctorate.
In this regards, with combining these levels, two groups of
higher education and non-higher education can be obtained
and solearning is expected to be diverse in these two
groups.Accordingly, this article focuses on investigating the
effect of higher education level on learning, using data in the
Non-metallic mineral products manufacturingfirms as one of
the main manufacturing industries in Iran. With investigating
two distributions, lognormalandPareto, the results of this study
have shown that a certain threshold of percentage of higher
educated employees for affecting on firm learning is needed. In
particular, firms with more than 30 percent of employees
affects firm’s learning and follows Pareto distribution.From
policy point of view, this finding indicates that soft business
support, instead of hard business support, including
employee’s education can be considered as one of the most
industrial policy in the case of developing countries.
Index Terms—Employees education composition, pareto
distribution, firm’s learning, manufacturing industries, Iran.
Mohammad Ali Feizpour, Mansour Mahinizadeh, and Marjan Habibiare
are with the Department of Economics, Business School, Yazd University,
Yazd, Iran (e-mail: m.a.feizpour@yazduni.ac.ir, m.habibi@stu.yazd.ac.ir).
Wen-Shai Hung is with the Department of Business Administration,
Providence University, Taiwan (e-mail: wshung@pu.edu.tw).
Cite: Mohammad Ali Feizpour, Mansour Mahinizadeh, Marjan Habibi, and Wen-Shai Hung, "Employees’ Educational Composition and Firm’s Learning: Evidence from Manufacturing Industries in Iran," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 165-169, 2015.