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Industry 4.0: revolution or hype? Reassessing recent technological trends and their impact on labour

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  • Armanda Cetrulo

    (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna)

  • Alessandro Nuvolari

    (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna)

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to reassess the current view of technological trends adopting a historical perspective. In our interpretation, the historical record provides some suggestive evidence for a more sceptical view of the notion of an emerging “fourth” industrial revolution. Indeed, even at an impressionistic glance, the recent developments in AI, communication and robotics that are marked as the core of the fourth industrial revolution, appear as a rather natural prolongation of the ICT macro-trajectories described in this paper. At the same time, to study the relation between technology and labour, we focus on the plant level as the most useful unit of analysis to consider the complex interaction between management systems, labour process and technological innovations. In this sense, we examine two Internet of Things’ technologies in order to underline the persistence of a fundamental trait of the capitalist mode of production, namely the exertion of control over workers. Consistently, we expect a continuity between newly emerging management practices and previous management systems, especially referring to the ones adopted during the ICT revolution.

Suggested Citation

  • Armanda Cetrulo & Alessandro Nuvolari, 2019. "Industry 4.0: revolution or hype? Reassessing recent technological trends and their impact on labour," Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, Springer;Associazione Amici di Economia e Politica Industriale, vol. 46(3), pages 391-402, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:epolin:v:46:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1007_s40812-019-00132-y
    DOI: 10.1007/s40812-019-00132-y
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    2. Fabio Montobbio & Jacopo Staccioli & Maria Enrica Virgillito & Marco Vivarelli, 2021. "Labour-saving automation and occupational exposure: a text-similarity measure," DISCE - Quaderni del Dipartimento di Politica Economica dipe0021, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE).
    3. Jongho Lee & Keun Lee, 2021. "Is the fourth industrial revolution a continuation of the third industrial revolution or something new under the sun? Analyzing technological regimes using US patent data [Vertical integration and ," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 30(1), pages 137-159.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Industry 4.0; ICT revolution; Management system; Control;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O30 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - General
    • O14 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Industrialization; Manufacturing and Service Industries; Choice of Technology
    • L23 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Organization of Production

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