HOW DOES A PROJECT-BASED ORGANIZATION AFFECT THE SMART FACTORY’S DEVELOPMENT? ACHIEVING “SMARTNESS” THROUGH A “FLUID MOSAIC” ORGANIZING

In this contribution we argue that a fluid mosaic organizing is in the need when it comes to develop innovation in a smart environment. Indeed we propose the fluid mosaic organization as a way of smart organizing. Our research focuses on three project-based organizations in order to answer this research question: how research and industry coordinate in a temporary project-based organization? What kinds of project-based organization can better stimulate collaboration and innovation among research and industry towards the effective smart factory’s development? Data have been collected from multiple sources: documents, interviews and participant observation. First results shows that when coordination is strongly based on the hierarchy, it is hard to transfer knowledge, making tricky the innovation development. Instead, when coordination is based on mutual adjustments between partners, the information flow is natural, as well as the knowledge transfer, leading to more flowing processes. However, all these mechanisms are strictly linked and depend also on the cognitive distance between the partners. Particularly, when the distance is low, the leadership style is democratic and coordination is firstly based on mutual adjustment and then standardization, the resulting smart organization takes the form of what we call a “fluid mosaic” drawing on the fluid mosaic concept developed in biology

How Can Organisations and Business Models Lead to a More Sustainable Society? A Framework from a Systematic Review of the Industry 4.0

The concept of Industry 4.0 has been mainly addressed by the current literature from a technological perspective, overlooking the organisational and even ethical challenges related to this recent paradigm. In order to become ‘4.0 compliant’, an enterprise must adapt its organisation and business approaches, and these changes may lead to a significant impact on sustainability. Therefore, we performed a systematic literature review to investigate the most recent Industry 4.0 research streams by adopting a multi-perspective approach. This analysis led to collect insights on the key traits of an Enterprise 4.0: integration, decomposed hierarchy, flexibility, and autonomy. Each of these keywords involves work environments, business and organisational models, and educational approaches, which constitute the key traits of the novel framework proposed in this study

Una riflessione critica su tecnologia digitale e futuro del lavoro a partire da “La rivoluzione Globotica” di Richard Baldwin

How are digital technologies changing work and professions? Will digital technologies – especially Artificial Intelligence – substitute even knowledge workers? “The Globotics Upheaval” by Richard Baldwin deals with those problems. In order to depict current changes generated by globalization and automation, Baldwin proposes a process composed by four steps, namely transformation, revolution, backlash and solution. The book investigates undoubtedly crucial problems but fails short in giving us a convincing answer. The author concludes that the globotics revolution will lead to more substitution of jobs, while generate others and betters. This conclusion is not so original, particularly if compared with current works on the topic. The author’s attempt, while interesting, remains superficial making even more apparent the need, often disregarded, of more in depth investigations rather that the creation of ad hoc concepts and neologisms. The book is useful for a basic understanding of the topic, but not so useful for forecasting the future of work