IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/teinso/v70y2022ics0160791x22001506.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Industry 4.0: What makes it a revolution? A historical framework to understand the phenomenon

Author

Listed:
  • Klingenberg, Cristina Orsolin
  • Borges, Marco Antônio Viana
  • Antunes, José Antônio do Vale

Abstract

This paper takes a historical approach to analyse the Fourth Industrial Revolution, denominated Industry 4.0. Although its technologies are more evolutive than disruptive, their combination and gradual improvement promise significant impacts on the economy and society, thus characterising a veritable revolution. However, the pace of diffusion depends on profit expectation, competition intensity, the regulatory system, financial availability, demand, the labour market, and attitudes towards the new technologies. To enhance understanding of the phenomenon, we describe a framework with three contextual elements of the history of each revolution: technological complementarities, economic institutions, and social structure.

Suggested Citation

  • Klingenberg, Cristina Orsolin & Borges, Marco Antônio Viana & Antunes, José Antônio do Vale, 2022. "Industry 4.0: What makes it a revolution? A historical framework to understand the phenomenon," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:teinso:v:70:y:2022:i:c:s0160791x22001506
    DOI: 10.1016/j.techsoc.2022.102009
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160791X22001506
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.techsoc.2022.102009?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bresnahan, Timothy F. & Trajtenberg, M., 1995. "General purpose technologies 'Engines of growth'?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 83-108, January.
    2. Henning Kagermann, 2015. "Change Through Digitization—Value Creation in the Age of Industry 4.0," Springer Books, in: Horst Albach & Heribert Meffert & Andreas Pinkwart & Ralf Reichwald (ed.), Management of Permanent Change, edition 127, chapter 2, pages 23-45, Springer.
    3. Richard A. D'Aveni & Giovanni Battista Dagnino & Ken G. Smith, 2010. "The age of temporary advantage," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(13), pages 1371-1385, December.
    4. David C. Mowery, 2009. "Plus ca change," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 18(1), pages 1-50, February.
    5. Chris Freeman & Luc Soete, 1997. "The Economics of Industrial Innovation, 3rd Edition," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 3, volume 1, number 0262061953, December.
    6. Jan Stentoft & Jan Olhager & Jussi Heikkilä & Lisa Thoms, 2016. "Manufacturing backshoring: a systematic literature review," Operations Management Research, Springer, vol. 9(3), pages 53-61, December.
    7. Michael C. Jensen, 2010. "The Modern Industrial Revolution, Exit, and the Failure of Internal Control Systems," Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Morgan Stanley, vol. 22(1), pages 43-58, January.
    8. Michael Porter, 1994. "The Role of Location in Competition," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 1(1), pages 35-40.
    9. Jovanovic, Boyan & Rousseau, Peter L., 2005. "General Purpose Technologies," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 18, pages 1181-1224, Elsevier.
    10. Landes,David S., 2003. "The Unbound Prometheus," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521826662, November.
    11. Rosenberg, Nathan, 1972. "Factors affecting the diffusion of technology," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 3-33.
    12. Anna Bezanson, 1922. "The Early Use of the Term Industrial Revolution," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 36(2), pages 343-349.
    13. Kovacs, Oliver, 2018. "The dark corners of industry 4.0 – Grounding economic governance 2.0," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 140-145.
    14. Geoffrey Parker & Georgios Petropoulos & Marshall Van Alstyne, 2020. "Digital platforms and antitrust," Bruegel Working Papers 39891, Bruegel.
    15. Weifeng Zhai & Shiling Sun & Guangxing Zhang, 2016. "Reshoring of American manufacturing companies from China," Operations Management Research, Springer, vol. 9(3), pages 62-74, December.
    16. Hodgson, Geoffrey M., 2021. "Financial institutions and the British Industrial Revolution: did financial underdevelopment hold back growth?," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 17(3), pages 429-448, June.
    17. Joel Mokyr, 1997. "Are we living in the middle of an Industrial Revolution?," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, vol. 82(Q II), pages 31-43.
    18. Landes,David S., 2003. "The Unbound Prometheus," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521534024, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Basile, Vincenzo & Tregua, Marco & Giacalone, Massimiliano, 2024. "A three-level view of readiness models: Statistical and managerial insights on industry 4.0," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    2. Didier, Nicolas, 2024. "Turning fragments into a lens: Technological change, industrial revolutions, and labor," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    3. Chung, Jae-Eun & Oh, Se-Gu & Moon, Hee-Cheol, 2022. "What drives SMEs to adopt smart technologies in Korea? Focusing on technological factors," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    4. Cannavacciuolo, Lorella & Ferraro, Giovanna & Ponsiglione, Cristina & Primario, Simonetta & Quinto, Ivana, 2023. "Technological innovation-enabling industry 4.0 paradigm: A systematic literature review," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    5. Zhang, Qian & Webster, Natasha A. & Han, Shengnan & Ayele, Workneh Yilma, 2023. "Contextualizing the rural in digital studies: A computational literature review of rural-digital relations," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    6. Safavi Jahromi, Gelayol & Ghazinoory, Sepehr, 2024. "From Superman to Garfield: Four scenarios regarding the effects of industry 4.0 on animation companies," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kemeny, Tom & Petralia, Sergio & Storper, Michael, 2022. "Disruptive innovation and spatial inequality," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 115953, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Ekaterina Prytkova, 2021. "ICT's Wide Web: a System-Level Analysis of ICT's Industrial Diffusion with Algorithmic Links," Jena Economics Research Papers 2021-005, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    3. Rahul Kapoor & Thomas Klueter, 2021. "Unbundling and Managing Uncertainty Surrounding Emerging Technologies," Strategy Science, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 62-74, March.
    4. Jurica Šimurina & Josip Tica, 2006. "Historical Perspective of the Role of Technology in Economic Development," EFZG Working Papers Series 0610, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb.
    5. Dosi, Giovanni & Nelson, Richard R., 2010. "Technical Change and Industrial Dynamics as Evolutionary Processes," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 51-127, Elsevier.
    6. Silvia Cosimato & Roberto Vona, 2021. "Digital Innovation for the Sustainability of Reshoring Strategies: A Literature Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(14), pages 1-16, July.
    7. Block, Joern H. & Hirschmann, Mirko & Kranz, Tobias & Neuenkirch, Matthias, 2023. "Public family firms and economic inequality across societies," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 19(C).
    8. Mark Knell & Simone Vannuccini, 2022. "Tools and concepts for understanding disruptive technological change after Schumpeter," Jena Economics Research Papers 2022-005, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    9. Aghion, Philippe & Akcigit, Ufuk & Howitt, Peter, 2014. "What Do We Learn From Schumpeterian Growth Theory?," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 515-563, Elsevier.
    10. Cirillo, Valeria & Rinaldini, Matteo & Staccioli, Jacopo & Virgillito, Maria Enrica, 2018. "Workers’ awareness context in Italian 4.0 factories," GLO Discussion Paper Series 240, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    11. Roberts, Simon H. & Foran, Barney D. & Axon, Colin J. & Stamp, Alice V., 2021. "Is the service industry really low-carbon? Energy, jobs and realistic country GHG emissions reductions," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 292(C).
    12. Palma, Nuno, 2018. "Money and modernization in early modern England," Financial History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(3), pages 231-261, December.
    13. Klaus Ackermann & Simon D Angus & Paul A Raschky, 2017. "The Internet as Quantitative Social Science Platform: Insights from a Trillion Observations," Papers 1701.05632, arXiv.org.
    14. Harald Edquist & Magnus Henrekson, 2006. "Technological Breakthroughs and Productivity Growth," Research in Economic History, in: Research in Economic History, pages 1-53, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    15. Vincent Mangematin & Khalid Errabi & Caroline Gauthier, 2011. "Large players in the nanogame: dedicated nanotech subsidiaries or distributed nanotech capabilities?," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 36(6), pages 640-664, December.
    16. Katz‬‏, ‪Ori, 2018. "Railroads, Economic Development, and the Demographic Transition in the United States," MPRA Paper 88869, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Giovanni Dosi & Richard Nelson, 2013. "The Evolution of Technologies: An Assessment of the State-of-the-Art," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 3(1), pages 3-46, June.
    18. Keiichi Kishi, 2015. "Dynamic analysis of wage inequality and creative destruction," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 115(1), pages 1-23, May.
    19. UCHIDA Ichihiro & TAKEDA Yosuke & SHIRAI Daichi, 2012. "Technology and Capital Adjustment Costs: Micro evidence of automobile electronics in the auto-parts suppliers," Discussion papers 12001, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    20. Monica A. Altamirano & Cees P. van Beers, 2018. "Frugal Innovations in Technological and Institutional Infrastructure: Impact of Mobile Phone Technology on Productivity, Public Service Provision and Inclusiveness," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 30(1), pages 84-107, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:teinso:v:70:y:2022:i:c:s0160791x22001506. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/technology-in-society .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.