The Fourth Industrial Revolution poses significant challenges to manufacturing companies from the technological, organizational and management points of view. This paper aims to explore how top executives interpret the concept of Industry 4.0, the driving forces for introducing new technologies and the main barriers to Industry 4.0. The authors applied a qualitative case study design involving 26 semi-structured interviews with leading members of firms, including chief digital officers and chief executive officers. Company websites and annual reports were also examined to increase the reliability and validity of the results. The authors found that management desire to increase control and enable real-time performance measurement is a significant driving force behind Industry 4.0, alongside production factors. Organizational resistance at both employee and middle management levels can significantly hinder the introduction of Industry 4.0 technologies, though these technologies can also transform management functions. Multinational enterprises have higher driving forces and lower barriers to industry 4.0 than small and medium-sized companies, but these smaller companies have good opportunities, too.

Introduction

The Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is currently taking place, sets a number of challenges for manufacturing companies from the technological, organizational and management points of view. With the application of new technologies and the transformation of processes, significant changes are expected in the field of work, and future production systems demand new competencies from employees. Work organization is expected to become more flexible in time and space, with workflows becoming more transparent, decentralized, and less hierarchical (Münchner Kreis, 2013; Picot and Neuburger, 2014). The exact risk of digitization is difficult to forecast, but nowadays it is becoming clear that workers in some countries are more defenseless than others. For example, in some regions, more than 25% of jobs are at high risk of automation (Segal, 2018). In the world of future production systems, some processes are expected to be simplified, and others to become much more complex and embedded. This is likely to lead to an increase in the number of higher skilled jobs and a reduction in jobs requiring lower qualifications (Brühl, 2015; Spath et al., 2013). Industry 4.0 will therefore have a significant impact on both the labour market and society. According to Kovács (2017b), the success of Industry 4.0 will be a function of both technical feasibility and the social acceptability of the whole transformation process. Vacek (2017) emphasized that if technological changes are not accompanied by significant changes in socio-economic systems, social cohesion may weaken. Industry 4.0 is therefore both a technological and socio-economic phenomenon (Szabó et al., 2019).