Do Machines Dream of Electric Workers?

The present paper is aimed to provide a theoretical framework for better understanding the relation between Industry 4.0 and organizing processes. The paper is based on a conceptual exploratory study and uses literature review to shed light to organizational strategies and configuration that may favourite the development of the so-called smart factory. Even though there are several articles and chapters on Industry 4.0, main works are focused on technology and operations. The analysis at meso-level of effective organizational strategies and practices seems to be still overlooked. This paper tries to feel this gap, trying to find out convergent elements between different organizational configurations, in order to highlight common strategies and practices. The findings of the exploratory study support the assumption that organizing and digital transformation associated with Industry 4.0 are entangled by a two-way relation: smart factory requires specific organizational strategies, model and practices. Moreover, organizational design impact of the level of digital readiness of firms and on the success of digital transformation. It is assumed that networked, flexible and semi-autonomous organizational systems that allow a certain degree of self-organization and internal/external networking seem to be more apt to face the challenge of industry 4.0. At the same time, it is possible to assume that there is not an “ideal” organizational form for Industry 4.0. The theoretical, methodological and practical implications of the main findings are discussed in the final part of the paper, and suggestions for future research are provided.

In this study, we explore the consequences of Industry 4.0 adoption in the workplace. Industry 4.0 refers to a set of technologies for the assembly line, which allows increasing automation on operational and decision-making activities. The literature agrees on the positive impact that Industry 4.0 technologies have on the production process. We find in the literature contradictory results on the role of labour and the changes consequent to the adoption of the technologies. To address this gap, we performed a multiple case study of three Italian manufacturing organisations. Findings show the positive consequences of Industry 4.0 technologies and how the management addresses the negative social consequences of Industry 4.0.

This chapter analyses the impact of remote e-work on workers’ well-being by exploring whether their perception of work-related stress and job satisfaction vary as a function of the type of remote location. It also explores whether organizational autonomy and discretion as well as work intensification have a differential impact on home-based and mobile e-workers’ job satisfaction and work-related stress. The main results suggest that compared to home-based e-workers, mobile ones perceive a greater number of work intensification dimensions as drivers of work-related stress, some of which (i.e. frequent work interruptions, working during one’s free time and time pressure) also have a significant negative impact on job satisfaction. Moreover, although several organizational autonomy and discretion variables positively affect mobile e-workers’ job satisfaction, only discretion over work pace is also significant to reduce their work-related stress. Our findings contribute to advance the understanding of current trajectories of the micro-level organizational transformations associated with the use of new digital technologies, offering insights into the ability of today’s European organizations to leverage the opportunity they open up to shape novel work practices that meet their organizational members’ needs.

The digital transformation of organizations is boosting workplace networking and collaboration while making it “observable” with unprecedented timeliness and detail. However, the informational and managerial potential of work datafication is still largely unutilized in human resource management (HRM) and its benefits, both at the individual and the organizational level, remain largely unexplored. Our research focuses on the relationship between digitally tracked work behaviors and employee attitudes and, in so doing, it explores work datafication as a source of data-driven HRM policies and practices. As a chapter of a wider research program, this paper presents some data analysis we performed on a collection of enterprise collaboration software (ECS) data, in search for promising correlations between behavioral and relational (digital) work patterns and employee attitudes. To this end, the digital actions performed by 106 employees in one year are transformed into a graph representation in order to analyze data under two different points of view: the individual (behavioral) perspective, according to the user who performed the action and the performed action, and the social (relational) perspective, making explicit the interactions between users and the objects of their actions. Different employees’ rankings are thus derived and correlated with their attitudes. Finally, we discuss the obtained results and their implications in terms of people analytics and data-driven HRM.

The fast pace of the technological evolution forces workers to update their competencies in order to remain attractive in the labor market. Those changes suggest that in order to remain employable, workers need to add new skills (either soft or digital) to their “traditional” competencies, demonstrating the ability to work in an interdisciplinary agile fashion. We argue that this professional evolution resembles the characteristics of the T-shaped professionals, and that it is possible to interpret the changes of jobs that are caused by the technological revolution drawing on job design literature. Hence, analyzing the data of a survey administered to a sample of 238 workers employed in Veneto Region, we explore the skill shapes of jobs that are present in the labor market and we assess their relationship with the workers’ and organizational characteristics.

The technological innovation has yielded great opportunities to expand and innovate the scope of services offered. This is particularly true for tourism, which has always been characterized by extensive innovativeness. The pace at which technological innovations diffuse within a specific sector depends on a variety of factors, including the influence of peers and relevant actors. The present study explores the level of interest about these new technologies on social media with the aim to explore the dynamics of reciprocal networking influence in technological diffusion. To capture the attitudes expressed in the industry, the study analyzes the ongoing discussions on Twitter as a proxy for the actors’ interest. Through a social network analysis of the flow of tweets, the analysis maps the current online discourse about new technologies diffusion. Moreover, the sentiment analysis draws the current perceptions toward the diffusion of new technologies. While previous research is focused on the users’ perception toward the development of new technologies in tourism, the aim of this study is to investigate the dynamics underneath the level of diffusion of information and awareness about these new technologies, which still represents an unexplored area of research. Thus, the paper contributes to the literature on new technology diffusion by intercepting current social media debate and literature studies focused on the diffusion of new technologies in tourism. The paper also highlights the role of knowledge broker in influencing this public debate.

The need for specific skills and competencies evolves in response to environmental, social and organizational conditions. However, the model for certifying competence levels has remained almost unchanged for centuries: universities (and other institutions) verify and certify that a person has reached a certain level of knowledge and through a standalone solution. The output is often a signed and stamped document that undoubtedly contains limitations in the present international, multilingual and dynamic job market. Universities, educational institutions and consortiums are increasingly exploring how technologies enable and support innovative models of competence certification. In this paper, we investigate how blockchain technologies improve the certification system and generate added value for different involved actors: learners, educational institutions and businesses. An exploratory study is proposed to systematize the overall impacts of blockchain in the field of digital certification while focusing on university education as the main research field. We conducted a first set of interviews with key players of the two Italian universities that first adopted a blockchain certification system. The aim is to investigate, through different but complementary organizational theories, the value creation factors and conditions for the various actors in the blockchain-based competence certification ecosystem.

In recent years, the diffusion of social media has revolutionized the way people live in society, communicate with each other and work in organizations. In detail, for public administrations, the diffusion and use of social media have meant a necessary rethinking of their work activities to increase the transparency of information and the services’ efficiency to be provided to citizens. However, social media use is strictly linked to the way people use them and the perception of their usefulness for the work activities to be performed. This chapter aims to understand the perception that civil servants have on social media's impact on the transparency and quality of services to citizens. Furthermore, it provides interesting practical and managerial implications on the relationship between organizational change and the use of social media in public organizations and provides literature on the use of information and communication technologies in the public sector.

In embracing information technology museums are rediscovering the importance of driving innovation in services and processes in order to promote value creation within social and cultural ecosystems. Innovation is the key source for driving museums to change and develop value creation processes by using information technology in order to strengthen audience involvement and user participation, while also enhancing the role of museum professionals as user-centered mediators in order to build a bridge between information and knowledge sources so as to enhance learning and education opportunities for users by strengthening user involvement and participation. With their move from adopting technology-enabled innovation to following a knowledge- and organisation-driven innovation, museums push innovation, emerging as value-driven and innovation-led organisations that contribute to building knowledge and value creation processes strengthening technology, organisation and human resources, and engaging users and audience as sources and key driving forces that help museum to rethink and rediscover sustainable organisation-led innovation strategies which can lead to social and public value-based and innovation-driven processes within social and cultural ecosystems.

The field of performance has grown so much over the years that in the various organizational contexts the awareness, and use of performance measurement (PM) systems has increased. This change occurs also in health care. Performance measurement emerged in healthcare organizations to better quantify the achievement of objectives, to evaluate overall performance and promote excellence. Meanwhile, organizations have increasingly refined ICT technologies and data collection and flows, in order to better configure performance measurement systems for the organizational units and processes. The focus of this research is to understand how technology can facilitate the monitoring of the indicators used in the measurement of health services, through an exploratory study on one specific hospital ward. In this case, the focus was on Academic Hospital of Catanzaro, where the performance measurement system was implemented in order to improve the quality of the offered services.

The paper aims to present and discuss the results of a performance research related to the fusion between two advanced teaching methodologies and their latest evolutions: the practice enterprise (PE) and the massive open online courses (MOOC). Ongoing practices encourage the extension of experience to the synergy between PE and MOOC with particular attention to the preparation of different roles of the teaching staff represented by teachers, tutors and mentors. The hypothesis concerns how to evaluate PE and MOOC with the same methodology, distinguishing the real performances from the perceived ones. This result would pave the way for a common platform to use these advanced teachings together, perfecting their implementation. The document wants to argue that this fusion is not only possible but also necessary to implement the preparation of teachers for further diffusion of these innovative didactics in higher education programmes.

The communication process between organizations and employees is going through a deep systemic revolution. Over time, the environments in which communication occurs have totally changed, also with new interdependencies between the actors involved in this dynamic information’s exchange. Drawing from the literature on social network and organizational behaviors, this study aims at rethinking the concept of organizational followership, starting from Kelley’s studies (1988), considering a perspective focused on the use of digital tools. The study is structured in two moments: an experiment on a social media account (Instagram), showing online users a series of pictures with cognitive bias to verify the ability to analyze targeted digital followership, and a qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews to a sample of native-digital people, to investigate possible behaviors and hidden motivations in digital ecosystems. The results suggest the possibility of cognitive biases in communication via social networks between leaders and followers, so the aim is to start the debate about the possibility that the phenomenon of communication via digital channels can overturn within organizations.

Since cognitive biases impair decision-making processes, organizations strive to reduce their effect. Training sustains such effort, especially when innovative learning approaches are adopted. The introduction of digital technologies, such as those related to Industry 4.0, challenges firms to upskill and reskill their employees. At the same time, these technologies offer a new set of tools for training. This paper proposes a conceptual model that disentangles the effect of the form of training and its reliance on digital technological tools, on the reduction of cognitive biases and performance in tasks related to digital transformations.