Content area
Full text
1. Introduction
Currently, because of the rapid development of digitalization and robotics, we are facing the next industrial revolution, known as “Industry 4.0”. Disruptive changes are taking place in the global manufacturing system (Strandhagen et al., 2017) through the use of smart technologies that enable new and more efficient processes, products and services (Lee et al., 2015; Zhong et al., 2017). Digitalization develops in various sectors at different speeds, depending on the complexity of business models. This change represents risks, challenges and opportunities to industry stakeholders and communities (Roblek et al., 2016; Strandhagen et al., 2017; Hirsch-Kreinsen, 2016).
Such changes will not collapse the entire system (Rajnai and Kocsis, 2017); rather, society will react more slowly, remaining at least close to a steady state situation. One of the main reasons that abrupt transitioning is not possible is the integration between Industry 4.0 and HRM-related topics, such as a lack of skilled staff to promote radical changes across entire supply chains, as HRM issues can affect supply chains considerably (Gowen III and Tallon, 2003). Keynes (2010) affirmed that technical efficiency increases faster than we can deal with the problem of labor absorption. These employment changes are multifaceted and complex, making it difficult to attribute specific causal effects (Evangelista et al., 2014) toward reaching conclusions on positive and negative perspectives.
Job numbers will generate redundancy effects across the global economy (Roblek et al., 2016). While estimates show that 47 per cent of American (OECD, 2015) and 30 per cent of British (Elliot, 2017) jobs are under high risk in the next 20 years, and in China over 60,000 workers were rendered jobless in 2016 when Foxconn decided to replace them with robots (Wakefield, 2016), Berger (2016) asserts a 50 per cent level of job absorption in the Western European economy in the same time range.
Relocation of activities, leveraging new business models, reinvestment in new industrial products and equipment and new services also change the employment scenario (Berger, 2016). Old work activities are disappearing and being replaced, and entirely new ones are being created. The most in-demand occupations today did not exist 10 or even five years ago; 65 per cent of children entering primary school today will ultimately end...