Cultural Diversity within Cyber-Physical Systems

Abstract

In international business, it is widely accepted that the cultural diversity of organizational member’s impacts operations. That is why interculturalists have developed approaches to managing this dimension of diversity within and across businesses for decades. When looking at operations in today’s international companies, an increasing transformation towards conditions that are often described as Industry 4.0 can be observed. People interact with machines and software in so-called Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). But the academic discourse regarding this transition mainly focuses on technical issues. The human factors have received limited attention and the role of culture within CPS has been widely neglected so far. To fill this gap, the paper at hand reviews journal articles and conference proceedings from the disciplines of operations management and business informatics. The findings concerning the role of people in CPS have been aligned with concepts of intercultural management and managing diversity. It has been found that the application of traditional concepts of describing cultural dimensions and their impact on interaction and cooperation are of limited usefulness when it comes to the integration of machines, software, and people with diverse backgrounds. Contemporary approaches to managing diversity appear more promising. Focusing on individual members instead of particular groups of members can improve the effectiveness and acceptance of CPS.