Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/203097 
Year of Publication: 
2019
Series/Report no.: 
LEM Working Paper Series No. 2019/07
Publisher: 
Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Pisa
Abstract: 
We explore the extent to which the current technological trend, dubbed Industry 4.0, might increase forms of control inside organisations, by focussing on pivotal firms in the so-called Italian Motor Valley currently embracing its adoption. We find that Industry 4.0 technologies open up great possibilities for incorporating the three forms of control identified by Orlikowski (1991), i.e. personal, bureaucratic, and social, into technological artefacts, often blending them together. If, on the one hand, this implies a technical and theoretical feasibility of enforcing forms of "Big Brother" surveillance within the boundaries of organisations, and hereby of the workplace, on the other hand, the actual achievement of these possibilities depends on the organisational environment within which the new technologies are implemented.
Subjects: 
Industry 4.0
Organisational Change
Control
Saturation of Working Time
JEL: 
L23
L6
M54
O33
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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