An investigation on logistics firms’ human resources qualifications in transition to Industry 4.0: An insight from Türkiye

Abstract

Industrial revolutions provide great opportunities for emerging countries concerning their aims of playing in the leagues of developed countries. Yet, accomplishing such an aim is up to their firms’ adaptation to the new era. Human resources seem particularly important because Industry 4.0 is transforming job definitions. Although prior studies highlight this importance, they do not sufficiently amplify the gap between current and ideal human resources qualifications. This study aims to contribute by giving insights into the amount of this gap in emerging countries. We conduct qualitative research on domestic logistics firms in Türkiye for a better understanding of whether or not current human resources qualifications are sufficient and, if not, what kind of qualifications are needed and how they should be attained. Findings show that current human resource qualifications are insufficient for Industry 4.0. For the employees to adapt to this new era, firms should be first aware of these qualifications. Moreover, their processes should make these qualifications functional and useful. Besides, there is a need for training the current employees to equip them with the respective skills/competencies required in the new era. However, our findings reveal that training the existing human resources due to their poor educational background would be extremely costly for firms. Therefore, they expect government incentives and support. They also emphasize the significant role of universities that should be able to foresee new skills/qualifications in the future and update their curricula. Our results suggest that only governmental bodies’ leadership in incentivizing firms to train employees and coordinating university programs to align them with new industry needs could enable firms’ successful transition to Industry 4.0 by continuously supplying qualified human resources to the labor market.