Exploring Organizational Sustainability of Industry 4.0 under the Triple Bottom Line: The Case of a Manufacturing Company

Alessio Maria Braccini and Emanuele Gabriel Margherita
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Alessio Maria Braccini: Department of Economics, Engineering, Society and Business, Università degli Studi della Tuscia, via del Paradiso 47, 01100 Viterbo (VT), Italy
Emanuele Gabriel Margherita: Department of Economics, Engineering, Society and Business, Università degli Studi della Tuscia, via del Paradiso 47, 01100 Viterbo (VT), Italy

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-17

Abstract: There is an increasing interest in sustainability practices for organizations. Organizations act sustainably when they support the three dimensions \of the triple bottom line. Industry 4.0 (I40) promises to afford organizations to act sustainably. However, few empirical pieces of research targeted the impact of I40 on the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainability. Our investigation considered the adoption of I40 in a manufacturing company which we analyzed as a single case study. We describe the level of I40 adoption and the process through which the unit has adopted them. Our case confirms that I40 applications support the triple bottom line through the improvement of productivity and product quality (economic), continuous energy consumption monitoring (environmental), and safer work environment and less intense work-load and job enrichment (social). We contribute to the literature by identifying two trajectories of interaction among the three dimensions of the triple bottom line in the shift from a traditional manufacturing company to a knowledge-intense organization. In the trajectories found, the three dimensions of sustainability influence and reinforce each other.

Keywords: Industry 4.0; organizational sustainability; triple bottom line; smart factory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

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