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The Challenge of Socio-Technical Work Design - An Essay on the Open Issues of Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0

Cover of volume 226 of the series Contributions from Research © sfs
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The socio-technical approach of work design is considered a prerequisite for implementing human-centered and efficient forms of work. For this reason, the well-known industrial modernization concepts Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0 refer to this approach, albeit in very different ways. However, in view of the crisis-driven transformation of industry, the future relevance of these concepts and the goal of human-oriented work design is uncertain.

This essay from Hartmut Hirsch-Kreinsen examines the challenges of socio-technical work design in the current phase of industrial transformation. It demonstrates how these challenges are approached differently within the Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0 concepts. Despite these divergences, it is argued that both visions draw on the socio-technical approach to designing human-centred work. It is shown that this approach offers a whole range of possibilities for designing human-centered work. However, it is critically noted that from a sociological point of view, the socio-technical system approach is criticised for being overly simplistic. This is because it focuses solely on the immediate work process and the 'container' of an individual company. It overlooks structural conditions of work that extend beyond this and have a lasting influence on the socio-technical design of work. This is particularly evident in the context of the current industrial transformation. Due to this situation the political future of the debate about the socio-technical design of work as well as the concepts of Industry 4.0 and 5.0 in general, can be regarded as highly uncertain. Given the crisis-level challenges of the industrial transformation, it is assumed that the debate on human-centred work and the concepts of Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0 will lose their current political relevance.

To the digital edition of volume 226 of Beiträge aus der Forschung