The present contribution aims at investigating the relationship between the introduction of Industry 4.0 technological innovations and the ensuing implications for workers’ skills composition, their empowerment, and their authority of intervention in the work process, within three Italian firms exhibiting a wide range of organisational practices: from Japanese Toyotism, to a mix of Taylorism and co-determination, up to the example most akin to the German ‘Mitbestimmung’. By distinguishing between the notions of discretion and autonomy in identifying the spheres of workers’ intervention authority, our findings corroborate the presence of hybrid workforce empowerment, reflected into an increase of workers’ discretionary intervention, and the lack of a similar increase in terms of autonomy, the latter meant as the possibility of establishing their own routines.
Workers’ intervention authority in Italian 4.0 factories: autonomy and discretion
Valeria Cirillo
Matteo Rinaldini
Jacopo Staccioli
Maria Enrica Virgillito
working paper 08/2019 may