The mediating effect of employees’ involvement on the relationship between Industry 4.0 and operational performance improvement

Abstract

This study aims at investigating whether EI (Employees’ Involvement) constitutes the mediating link relating Industry 4.0 technologies to operational performance improvement in emerging countries. When manufacturing companies within this socio-economic context adopt Industry 4.0 technologies, they may either reinforce or undermine the importance of practices related to EI, hence affecting the level of operational performance improvement. In this sense, we carried out a survey with 147 Brazilian manufacturers that have already started to implement Industry 4.0 technologies concurrently with their existing continuous improvement programmes, which are highly based on EI practices. Findings indi..