Organizational Impacts on Sustainability of Industry 4.0: A Systematic Literature Review from Empirical Case Studies

Abstract

There is an increasing interest in Industry 4.0 (I40) applications for organizations to act sustainable. Indeed literature agrees the adoption of I40 technologies promises various organizational benefits which lead to the achievement of an enduring sustainability and competitive advantage for organizations. However, there is a lack of a study which provides transparency confirming and summarizing those spawned organizational benefits. This paper aims at addressing this gap performing a systematic literature review analyzing I40 empirical case studies for detecting the spawned I40 organizational impacts on sustainability. We employed the triple bottom line (TBL) concept as sensitive device to confront different studies distinguishing among the sustainability dimensions, namely the economic, social and environmental dimensions. We then categorize and group I40 organizational impacts according to TBL dimensions. The review portrays an initial empirical knowledge regarding the I40 organizational impacts on sustainability since 18 I40 empirical case study have found. Furthermore, the literature review reveals that I40 applications mainly impact the economic dimension whereas few applications generated benefits for the remaining dimensions.