Taking Responsibility for Industrial Digitalization: Navigating Organizational Challenges

Linnéa Carlsson, Anna Karin Olsson and Kristina Eriksson
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Linnéa Carlsson: School of Business, Economics and IT, University West, SE-461 86 Trollhättan, Sweden
Anna Karin Olsson: School of Business, Economics and IT, University West, SE-461 86 Trollhättan, Sweden
Kristina Eriksson: Department of Engineering Science, University West, SE-461 86 Trollhättan, Sweden

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 2, 1-19

Abstract: In this article, an employee perspective has been applied in aiming to explore how organizations face challenges and take responsibility for industrial digitalization, thus extending the research on the human-centric perspective in relation to Industry 4.0 technologies. To give emphasis to the human-centric perspective, the co-workership wheel was applied to identify and analyze data. The findings of an explorative longitudinal qualitative case study consisting of 35 in-depth interviews with informants from a manufacturing company were used. Additional data collection consisted of documents and project meetings. By applying a human-centric perspective, llessons learned from this case study show that taking responsibility for industrial digitalization is challenging and the importance of an adaptive organizational culture and a focus on learning and competence are crucial. We argue that the findings give useful implications for manufacturing organizations navigating the challenges of industrial digitalization to sense and seize the benefits of Industry 4.0 technologies.

Keywords: industrial digitalization; Industry 4.0 technologies; co-workership wheel; adaptive culture; learning; competence; manufacturing; human-centric (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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