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Managerial challenges of Industry 4.0: an empirically backed research agenda for a nascent field

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  • Paul Schneider

    (University of Cologne)

Abstract

The increasing intelligence of products and systems, their intra-company cross-linking and their cross-company integration into value creation networks is referred to as Industry 4.0. Academics and practitioners, largely agreeing on the global importance of this proclaimed industrial revolution, have published many contributions on the topic. Research, however, is rather focused on investigating single technologies in quite specific application domains and largely neglects the profound managerial challenges underlying Industry 4.0. Given the recent plea for a more active contribution from the management science community, we strive to establish Industry 4.0 as a challenging but promising field for management research, and aim to assist scholars in engaging with the topic. Therefore, we first gather and analyze extant contributions by means of a systematic literature review and synthesize the information gained into 18 managerial challenges of Industry 4.0 falling into six interrelated clusters: (1) strategy and analysis, (2) planning and implementation, (3) cooperation and networks, (4) business models, (5) human resources and (6) change and leadership. Considering that Industry 4.0 is still an emerging topic and publications may therefore not always be found in highly ranked journals, we aimed to increase the confidence in our findings and triangulated our data by conducting an online survey of industry experts and academics that allows us to qualify the identified challenges in terms of importance and future research need. On this basis, we present an empirically backed research agenda and suggest fruitful avenues for future research in three basic categories: practice-enhancing research, knowledge-enhancing research, and high-impact research.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul Schneider, 2018. "Managerial challenges of Industry 4.0: an empirically backed research agenda for a nascent field," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 803-848, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:rvmgts:v:12:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s11846-018-0283-2
    DOI: 10.1007/s11846-018-0283-2
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Industry 4.0; Industrie 4.0; Industrial Internet; Management; Review; Digitization;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M19 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Other
    • O39 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Other

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