Paper Info
Title
Industry 4.0 Tools In Innovative European Firms: Exploring Their Adoption And Communication Features Through Content Analysis
Abstract
Industry 4.0 is a popular topic in management literature, but it is also an interdisciplinary subject, maintaining a strong engineering connotation. Firm decision-making processes are more and more affected by Industry 4.0 which has introduced numerous tools that benefit and greatly support business activities. In this domain, the focus of this paper is the information made available to stakeholders on Industry 4.0 tools in use through a content analysis of the Annual Reports of the main European innovative firms (from the top ten of the Boston Consulting Group ranking). The analysis seeks to highlight how firms describe and qualify these tools in terms of impact (risk, strategy or environmental), the perspective used in illustrating them (managerial or engineering) as well as the temporal orientation of the information provided (present, past, future or none). Results show that innovative European firms pay attention and use these tools, in different ways and for different purposes. The paper has both theoretical and managerial implications. From a theoretical point of view, it contributes to study and further the literature on Industry 4.0 and its instruments, while from a managerial perspective, it gives a better understanding of how these innovative tools can be communicated to external stakeholders, especially investors. (C) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Year
DOI
Venue
2020
10.1016/j.procs.2021.01.257
PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2ND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON INDUSTRY 4.0 AND SMART MANUFACTURING (ISM 2020)
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Industry 4.0, innovative firms, content analysis, Annual Report
Conference
180
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
1877-0509
0
0.34
References 
Authors
0
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Michela Piccarozzi100.34
Cecilia Silvestr200.34
Barbara Aquilani300.34
Chiara Cagnetti400.34