Industry 4.0 in management studies: A systematic literature review

Abstract

Recent developments in production processes and their automation have led to the definition of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, commonly known as "Industry 4.0". Industry 4.0 is a very broad domain that includes: production processes, efficiency, data management, relationship with consumers, competitiveness, and much more. At the same time, obviously, Industry 4.0 has become a new theme for management scholars and business economics disciplines and a number of contributions covering various issues and aspects have been published. However, a systematic formulation of all these contributions is still lacking in management literature. Therefore, the aim of the paper is to analyze and classify the main contributions published on the topic of Industry 4.0 in management literature, seeking to give it a unique definition, discover the gaps still remaining in literature and outline future avenues of research in this domain. A systematic review of the literature of the major academic and research databases has been used as methodology to achieve the aim of the paper. This work contributes theoretically to the development of literature on Industry 4.0 and from a managerial perspective it could support entrepreneurs in better understanding the implications and fields of application of the Fourth Industrial Revolution as well as the interplay among them.