How Can Organisations and Business Models Lead to a More Sustainable Society? A Framework from a Systematic Review of the Industry 4.0

Abstract

The concept of Industry 4.0 has been mainly addressed by the current literature from a technological perspective, overlooking the organisational and even ethical challenges related to this recent paradigm. In order to become ‘4.0 compliant’, an enterprise must adapt its organisation and business approaches, and these changes may lead to a significant impact on sustainability. Therefore, we performed a systematic literature review to investigate the most recent Industry 4.0 research streams by adopting a multi-perspective approach. This analysis led to collect insights on the key traits of an Enterprise 4.0: integration, decomposed hierarchy, flexibility, and autonomy. Each of these keywords involves work environments, business and organisational models, and educational approaches, which constitute the key traits of the novel framework proposed in this study.

Sustainable Development and Industry 4.0: A Bibliometric Analysis Identifying Key Scientific Problems of the Sustainable Industry 4.0

“…Similarly, the problem of the distinctiveness of the features of "Sustainable Industry 4.0" and "Industry 4.0" was considered in the work of Erol (2016) [69]. In addition, other authors (2019) [70] propose a new approach to Industry 4.0 organizations and business models that are able to lead to a more sustainable society. set of "smart" technology is extracted from Industry 4.0 in order to apply it for sustainability.…”

Influence of Business Commitment to Sustainability, Perceived Value Fit, and Gender in Job Seekers’ Pursuit Intentions: A Cross-Country Moderated Mediation Analysis

“…Coupled with an increasing demand in some occupations, a labor shortage is expected in the next decade, making fiercer the war for talent [14,18]. In this context, organizations need to find new formulas to attract and retain valuable human resources [4,21].…”

“…Many firms realize the importance of corporate sustainability [4,21]. Hiring and retaining highly skilled employees can be an efficient way to achieve sustainable competitive advantages, noting that a quality workforce may be a necessary condition for business success [22][23][24].…”

“…Signaling theory [25,32] has been widely used for explaining how organizations commitment to sustainability may influence job seekers' perceptions about organizations (e.g., [1,4,9]). The core premise derived from this theory is that organizational attributes provide prospective employees with information about what it would be like to work for an organization [33,34].…”

“…Many candidates are looking for companies that share these sustainability values [1,2]. Recruitment messages can play a key role to attract talent by communicating companies' commitment to sustainability (e.g., [2][3][4]). Messages communicating companies' commitment to sustainability would send information that could be interpreted as signals of job seekers perceived fit with the organization.…”