The Ability of Project Managers to Implement Industry 4.0-Related Projects

Abstract

The 4 th Industrial Revolution is challenging the ways we are working at all fronts. Its impact is felt in families, organisations and communities. The impact on organisations and particularly working environments is still largely an unknown. Part of the working environment entails the way project teams should be managed. Speed and agility are required to implement the various technologies that form the underlying basis of the 4 th Industrial Revolution. This requires project teams and project managers to adjust their behaviour. This article focuses on the various leadership styles and those that are more appropriate for the implementation of these new technologies. A survey was conducted amongst South African project managers to determine their level of servant-leadership and 621 responses were analysed. The analysis focused on servant-leadership attributes. The results determined that five attributes of the servant-leadership style are important but that in general, South African project managers still focus on a 'command and control' type of leadership. The article contributes to the current debate on the best ways to manage project teams during the 4 th Industrial Revolution. The jury is still out on the best working environment and the results indicate that a servant-leadership style is most appropriate but that project managers are not embracing this leadership style. This might have to do with training that they have had. Current project management best practices and competencies do not focus on this new way of working and organisations and project management bodies need to address this concern. INDEX TERMS Agile software development, Industry 4.0, project management, servant-leadership.

Human resources management 4.0: Literature review and trends

“…Digital transformation in the workplace is a phenomenon that causes significant changes in how workers perform tasks, processes, engage in social relationships, and workplace experiences (Meske & Junglas, 2020;Pejic-Bach et al, 2020;Romero-Gázquez & Bueno-Delgado, 2018), and the incorporation of technological applications creates uncertainty owing to the possible replacement of human labor by digital technologies. Therefore, the authors propose that new technologies arising from the Fourth Industrial Revolution should be investigated, analyzed, and adapted by companies' knowledge management to ensure the inclusion of digital jobs (Ana et al, 2019;Marnewick & Marnewick, 2020). This may decrease the resistance to change (Cheng & Hahm, 2019) and prepare companies for a consolidated digital culture (Molino et al, 2020).…”

“…It is necessary to understand the changes related to leadership because traditional leadership is not compatible with interconnected humans and machines (Cortellazzo et al, 2019;Zakaria et al, 2019). Traditional styles are being replaced by ambidextrous leadership, showing flexibility of behavior (Rosing et al, 2011), which creates positive change through transformation (Marnewick & Marnewick, 2020;Sarwono & Bernarto, 2020). For the digital culture to be consolidated by companies, this transformation is a challenge that must be overcome (Zakaria et al, 2019).…”

Organizational Agility in Industry 4.0: A Systematic Literature Review

“…However, the authors argued whether adopting the Industry 4.0 technologies increase agility in a dynamic way [138,139], or whether adopting the Industry 4.0 technologies presents a change management challenge [140]. Moreover, it is suggested that the change induced by adopting Industry 4.0 technologies is not ordinary but rather a radical change in culture, structure and operations of organizations [139,[141][142][143]. Thus, only organizations which develop a nascent capability of agility will be better off by adopting Industry 4.0 technologies [107,[144][145][146].…”

The Digital Chasm between an Idea and Its Implementation in Industry 4.0—The Case Study of a Polish Service Company

“…There is currently a debate on the best ways to manage project teams during the Fourth Industrial Revolution. According to research conducted by Marnewick and Marnewick, the best leadership style for Industry 4.0 projects is defined as servant-leadership, according to which the position of the project manager is not due to his formal power and attributes but skills and knowledge [74], (p. 314). This style is in contradiction with the conditions of management in a traditional organization with a functional structure.…”