Beschäftigtenvorbehalte gegen digitale Assistenzsysteme: Konfliktquellen und partizipative Technikgestaltung im soziotechnischen System

Digital assistance systems are primarily aimed at situational problems on the shop floor. They are introduced in a tension between corporate strategy and employee participation and can provoke reservations, rejection or conflicts among employees. For this reason, the importance of employee participation for successful introduction processes is obvious to avoid potential friction. However, participation-oriented practice remains a research gap. This article presents the introduction process of a digital assistance system in the assembly department of a mechanical engineering company, which addressed the concerns of the skilled workers and included them in the design of the system through direct employee participation and the involvement of the works council. The employee perspective became the starting point for the social embedding of technological change. Our results show that reservations about digitization processes arise from an extension of internal conflicts about the interpretation of the work system and refer to concrete experiences made in the company, which the introduction must address.