Human Needs Evolution and Organizational Development: A Case Study Analysis towards the Fifth Industrial Revolution

Abstract

Human needs and motivations depend on the person, on different generations, and on the life cycle period with its past experiences and future expectations. Moreover, the technological development goes along the organizational and human factor development leading to changes in the way of working of past and actual environments. Therefore, how the technologies of the fourth industrial revolution are impacting the human needs and the organizational development is a challenging research and practical gap. Therefore, the research question is how to integrate the human factor in the future organizational environment of the fifth industrial revolution. The paper presents an analysis of different areas impacting the challenge such as: human needs theories, management and leadership development, organizational development along the industrial revolutions, as well as the evolution of the different human generations towards a preliminary evolutionary model based on human needs. Moreover, other factors are analyzed such as the needs of human beings in the environment of influence of the organization as well as the life cycle of the human factor. Furthermore, the paper analyzes the human-machine interaction in different horizons from strategic to operative associated with Industry 4.0 technologies impacting the organizational sustainability and human well-being. For that purpose, a Human Digital Twin (HDT) model is developed with different levels influencing the human decision-making process with the goal to serve the human being to open new ways of working. To sum-up, the analysis and conceptual model presented serve as basis to derive future course of actions at the individual as well as in the organizational level based on the prediction and analysis of potential scenarios with their own risks and opportunities considering the human factor as an active element within the organization supporting new ways of working by considering the dynamic needs and motivations of the interacting agents.