Sustainability accounting and reporting in the industry 4.0

Abstract

Industry 4.0 is the fourth industrial revolution. It is formed on the building blocks of Industrial Internet of Things, real-time data collection and predictive analytics using big data analytics, artificial intelligence, and cloud manufacturing. The complexity and value of Industry 4.0 is established by the existing research studies. Some of the research studies have proposed the design elements and contribution of Industry 4.0 to achieving sustainability objectives. This research delves deeper into this area to evolve a new research challenge on contribution of Industry 4.0 to sustainability accounting and reporting. Through a methodology of two focus group discussions and interviews, this research derived an empirical formulation presenting a mapping between Industry 4.0 attributes and selected material topics and their disclosures in Global Reporting Initiative framework. The empirical formulation divided the Industry 4.0 framework in India into three levels of maturity each mapped with the appropriate triple bottomline topics under the Global Reporting Initiative. This empirical formulation requires further research to establish its validity as it appears to be not-to-optimistic representation by the members of the two focus groups. The Interview respondents suggested cautious approach as AI-based predictive analytics and automation may need a long maturity path. Soft aspects of reluctance to complexity and new technology adoption may need continuous evolution of technical and other training programmes with the maturity of Industry 4.0 for sustainability accounting and reporting in an organisation.