Top-Down Orientation on Fourth Industrial Revolution: A Literature Review

Abstract

Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR 4.0) through convergence of technologies is blurring the lines between physical and virtual world. It has not only redefined the operations for companies and policy making for countries but has led to new possibilities for human life. With this broad and significant impact, this paper uniquely contributes to share a wide-spectrum view from macro/country to micro/organization level (top-down approach) on IR 4.0. Bibliometric and thematic analysis methodology has been used to review 255 journal articles from 1964 to mid-2019. The findings of this review reveal four distinct orientation (Country, Industry, Functional and Organizational Orientation) on IR 4.0. The study further identifies five sub-orientation of functional orientation (Risk Management, Customer Service Management, Operations Management, Value Chain Management and Supply Chain Management) and three sub-orientation of organizational orientation (People, Process and Product-Service). The future studies can consider this top-down approach orientation for comprehensive viewpoint on IR 4.0, which at present is largely understudied, and is also uncommon in most of the existing literature reviews on IR 4.0.