On the road to Industry 4.0 in manufacturing clusters: the role of business support organisations
ISSN: 1059-5422
Article publication date: 9 May 2022
Issue publication date: 15 November 2022
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the role of business support organisations (BSO) in overcoming barriers to the adoption of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies, especially in disseminating knowledge on such technologies among cluster firms.
Design/methodology/approach
The study is based on in-depth interviews conducted in 2021 with representatives of BSO in three manufacturing clusters (furniture, metal and automotive) in the Wielkopolska region in Poland.
Findings
Companies in clusters face important barriers impeding the adoption of I4.0 technologies, in particular, the unawareness of the characteristics and potential of those technologies. BSO might be particularly helpful in overcoming this barrier by supporting knowledge dissemination among companies. This study’s analyses suggest they can do so in three roles: as knowledge gatekeepers, as brokers of purposeful knowledge transfer and as facilitators of spontaneous knowledge diffusion. Evidence suggests that different types of organisations are more likely to be associated with each of these three roles, despite such a combination of the three often being in one place: public agencies are gatekeeping, selecting and passing on certain knowledge on I4.0; research-oriented organisations (such as technology parks) play a knowledge transfer brokerage role; industry associations and cluster initiatives are actively facilitating spontaneous knowledge diffusion.
Originality/value
This paper is a contribution to the emerging literature on digital transformations of clusters by investigating the difficulties preventing firms from adopting I4.0 technologies and the roles BSO can take on to support overcoming them.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The research was conducted under the Bekker Programme of the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA), as part of the visit at the University of Padova – contract no. PPN/BEK/2019/1/00308/U/00001.
Authors would like to thank the participants of the AISRe Summer School in Padova (6-9.07.2021) and of the 60th ERSA Congress (24-27.08.2021), as well as Prof. Eleonora Di Maria, Dr Mauro Capestro, Dr Aleksandra Kania and two anonymous Reviewers for the valuable comments which helped to improve the quality of this paper.
Citation
Dyba, W. and De Marchi, V. (2022), "On the road to Industry 4.0 in manufacturing clusters: the role of business support organisations", Competitiveness Review, Vol. 32 No. 5, pp. 760-776. https://doi.org/10.1108/CR-09-2021-0126
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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