Agile Business Leadership Methods for Industry 4.0

The current Industry 4.0 era is considered not only as a process that dominates technological developments but also as a process that influences the leadership styles. Management 4.0 is essential for businesses to find and apply the appropriate technologies in the age of Industry 4.0. The leadership styles that business managers will adopt in order to be successful in this process and to survive in an intensely competitive environment can play an important role. At this point, a significant problem arises: identifying leadership styles that will bring success. In this context, the primary purpose of this chapter is to explain the modern leadership styles that business managers can adopt or follow in the age of Industry 4.0. In line with this purpose, the chapter first describes the historical development of leadership, leadership theories and modern leadership styles, such as transactional, transformational, technological, strategic, visionary and agile leadership, and all these concepts are discussed based on the Industry 4.0 perspective.

Today, with the introduction of concepts such as big data, social media, corporate social responsibility and e-commerce have become part of our lives, thus the transition to Marketing 4.0 is accelerating. One of the most vital activities that affect consumers’ purchasing decisions is e-commerce. E-commerce plays a decisive role in purchasing stages and processes. For this reason, e-commerce has become an issue that increases the importance of individuals in the purchasing process and decision every day and needs to be emphasized. In line with all this, the concepts of digital marketing and e-commerce will be handled in a broad framework in this study. Moreover, the digitalization of e-commerce sites will be held in the review of literature beside the environment and techniques that can be used within the scope of digital marketing. New approaches and trends that guide modern marketing are changing day by day. The main reason for this change is based on the rapid transformation in information and communication technologies. For this reason, it is important for marketing managers to adapt to these transformations and to use media and techniques in digital marketing.

Nowadays, organizations have to resist the rising competition more effectively than their competitors and take a step closer to excellence in offering the product to customer demands. To do this, organizations need agile leaders in order to implement agility principles and practices. Especially in the health sector, health managers must be agile because of the specific characteristics of health services. From this view, this chapter aims to develop a theoretical agile leadership model in healthcare organizations. First, the authors define agile leadership and its sub-dimensions based on previous literature. Then, the antecedents and outcomes of agile leadership have been analyzed. “Drivers of agile leadership,” “organizational factors affecting agile leadership” and “individual factors affecting agile leadership” are identified as the antecedents of agile leadership. “Organizational outcomes” and “individual outcomes” are determined as the outcomes of agile leadership in the health sector.

The concept of Industry 4.0 emerged in Germany in 2011 for the first time causes production processes to be increasingly interconnected and to be more effective owing to its economic and social benefits. The structure of international trade is getting changed due to Industry 4.0. Manufacturing sector is one of the leading sectors in international trade. Manufacturing sector which has remarkable share of exports brings up against significant challenges aiming to competitively design and manage modern products, which are changing and accelerating the complicated multi-domain systems. That producing is more innovatively due to advantages provided by Industry 4.0 impact, positively international trade. The reason is that use of advanced robotic machines and automatization in production process reduces labour costs and thus increases competitiveness of a country in the international markets. The aim of this study is to exhibit a theoretical framework between the digitalization and international trade and to examine how Industry 4.0 impacts international trade in Turkey.

There is a close relationship between labour markets and technology. Technological development enhances labour productivity and creates new jobs in some industries requiring to be different skills while it destroys jobs in ones requiring to be low-skilled. Today, it is experiencing a deep digital transformation. It may be evaluated for Industry 4.0 to cause technological unemployment due to changes in the structure of employment and to bring about new structural problems in labour market. In addition, it is expected for technological progress such as automation and robotic in the production process to negatively influence employment of low-skilled workers. Industry 4.0 has generated a new production model, in which robotic technologies are effectively used in the production process. So-called new technology-based production process has started to change production, working relationship and daily life. Discussions about the effects of the developments in technology on the labour market and unemployment are separated two groups. While there exist optimist views indicating that such development in technology will result in more productivity, pessimists believe that the use of robots, artificial intelligence, smart systems and algorithms in business life will eventually bring problems such as mass unemployment, mass poverty and social disruption. In this study, the authors aim to analyse the potential effects of Industry 4.0 on labour market in Turkey and European countries. From the findings of the study, the authors concluded that Turkey have a higher risk at automation than European countries.

At the doorsteps of the fourth wave of the industrial revolution, it is compulsory to develop a new understanding regarding the future of human labor based on “Industry 4.0” for German manufacturers, and two American concepts: “The Industrial Internet” and “The Internet of Things.” How will the nature of human work be in the digital economy of the forthcoming future? The problem of unemployment and the composition of the labor market, in terms of professional skills, are yet to be waiting for answers. Scientific management is also transforming to answer the emerging requirements of this new era, as “Digital Taylorism” to re-organize work in a techno-centric manner. Accordingly, the aim of this chapter is to examine the nature and the possible opportunities and threats of the digital age and try to develop a digital Taylorism understanding to minimize the negative impacts of digitalism on both individual workers and society in a way that all parts including the manufacturers can fully take the benefit of potential advantages of this new era.

Female leader is a major topic in the male of today that’s hardly getting attention. World today needs women in more positions of leadership. Today’s organizations need effective and agile leaders who understand the complexities of the rapidly changing global environment. This situation requires urgent attention as the world needs female as well as male characteristics to address global issues. Women represent half of the modern world’s abilities and population. They are important for economic and social prosperity for the world. Women carry a viewpoint that respects not only competitiveness but also organizational and team cooperation. Their female ideals are a functioning structure of new, cooperative and open economy. Eventually, the leadership of women will not only boost business, family and culture, but also the environment that will become more prosperous and peaceful as a result. In today’s modern world many researches are conducted on global, social and cultural forces, such as globalization, e-commerce, changing markets, the spread of technology and the need for teamwork, alliances and partnerships, show a high need for women leaders. But what is the role and leadership style of female leaders here? In this context, the purpose of this study is to discuss the leadership styles and what kind of leadership style female managers exhibit in line with the literature. The research showed that female managers have more agile leadership qualities and the authors suggested that female leaders should be brought forward for the opportunity to lead others toward a better future.

While the studies on the use of smart robots in the production, which is known as the Industry 4.0 revolution, continue rapidly, the competition race is in the right proportion with this and businesses that do not want to fall behind the age have to follow the developments in Industry 4.0 and adapt. This chapter examines the Industry 4.0 revolution and its effect on accounting. Incorrect information from one of the business departments affects the entire system. Especially in the accounting department, which records the financial movements of the business and reports the results of them, and which is effective in making decisions that affect the whole business based on these results, the use of smart systems helps to reduce human-made mistakes and the system to act faster while also the systems used in traditional accounting are abandoned. However, brain power is still required, which must analyze the results. While the revolution is still developing, there are a lot of theories about the future. The expected outcome of these is that with the revolution, the need for brain power to analyze system outputs will increase, even if the need for human labour in the industry decreases. In this context, especially those who perform the accounting profession must constantly renew themselves.

Biomimicry is an interdisciplinary approach inspired by the living beings in nature while searching for solutions to solve mankind’s problems. This new approach emerging in the late 1990s has been quite innovative while dealing with basic problem solving processes in a business environment. Biomimicry is a creative solution for such processes as design, transformation, organization and sustainability in business enterprises. The objective of this work is to offer model samples that build a bridge between the nature and business organizations. The principles in nature offer many strategies for a sustainable business performance and thus help us maintain optimization and effectiveness in business management through cooperation.

The present business environment of accelerated complexity, ambiguity, uncertainty and volatility seems not to be settling down soon. Today’s business world is consistently bombarded with turmoil and unprecedented change. This makes it very difficult for organisations to accurately predict possible future opportunities and threats. To overcome this scenario, organisations need to fully embrace and implement agility in their operations. However, for organisations to develop a considerable level of agility that corresponds to the current hypercompetitive and volatile environment, premium needs to be placed on agile leadership. Agile leaders are capable of setting the guiding principles, develop strategies and build mechanisms that will lead to smooth transition to organisational agility (OA). These leaders give directions on how to make organisations agile and ensure that there is a leadership culture that models and promotes a holistic agility in the organisation. The primary purpose of this chapter is to establish the position of agile leadership in determining OA. The study departs from previous studies by using empirical reviews to depict the significance of agile leadership and its key roles on OA. Specifically, the concept, evolution and characteristics of OA are explored, as well as its benefits and multidimensional nature are discussed. Furthermore, the chapter sheds light on agile leadership, levels of leadership agility and competencies of successful agile leaders. The chapter concludes that the leadership style suitable for OA is agile leadership. This calls for business investments in agile capacity building and development of frameworks suitable for agile leadership.

Industry 4.0 and the new technological transformation process it represents pose major challenges for the world today. Now, a new period has been entered, which will affect every point of daily life, from production to trade, and from health to entertainment. In terms of its scope and complexity, this period is unlike any that humanity has experienced before. The concept of Industry 4.0 is an external reflection of the innovations and applications made and to be made not only in today but also in the production methods of the future. Because this change and development occurs as a result of a certain accumulation and continues to occur continuously, it is evident that strategy is of great importance in today’s constantly changing and developing world. It is of great importance for leaders to develop strategies for evaluating the opportunity areas emerging by anticipating change in the Industry 4.0 process and to carry organizations and society into the future. Strategic leaders can do this effectively. At this point, strategic leadership is an important issue. Based on this idea, in this study, the strategic leadership issue from Industry 4.0 perspective will be examined in a theoretical context.

Today humanity is facing a time period, in which the speed and rate of change in different fields are faced. The rapid and effective change in the technological, economic, military, social and cultural fields all over the world in recent years has had important results in many topics such as informatics, interactive communication, production, data production and sharing and forms of consumption and perception. Changes and developments at very high speeds and rates affect the personal life, social life and work life in a deep manner, especially after the 1980s, paving the way for many concepts such as globalization, Industry 4.0, digitalization, new economy, new world order and digital transformation age to be the leading variables in every field of social sciences.

Production, consumption and communication forms at the global level are becoming more and more in depth and predicting the future is becoming more and more difficult and valuable. Understanding, analyzing and predicting the future for national and international companies and organizations directly and indirectly affect all economic, military and political variables. At this point, competition stands out as one of the most critical concepts for survival and growth for profit-oriented companies.

Based on this, the topics and contents selected in this study were created to cover the field of management and strategy. Indeed, in this study, the concept of organizational agility is explored theoretically from a historical perspective on the concept of Industry 4.0 and especially emphasized the dimensions and components of agility used in today’s world.

Within the scope of this study, the aim is to define and present the general framework of the Industry 4.0 and agile firms, which aim to combine the conceptual and theoretical infrastructure with the implementation of the agile firms within the field. In this respect, the study defines the situation coming from the past together with the world of today in the relationship of the technological and economical dimensions of globalization with the digitalization and latest theoretical view for the agile firm’s structure and management. On the other hand; in this study, the possible effects of the recent COVID-19 pandemic crisis on the management of organizations are interpreted in the context of Industry 4.0 and agile companies. This aim will provide a foresight for the future periods, with the conclusions added with the theory of senism, which present the dominant value of the study.

The primary objective of the current study is to examine the role of leadership styles and Industry 4.0 in organization performance. In addition, the direct and indirect effect of job satisfaction, competitive advantage and business sustainability is also examined. For this purpose, a cross-sectional research design was selected. Population of the study were based on the manufacturing Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) of Thailand. Employees of these SMEs were selected to collect the data. Therefore, respondents of the study were employees of Thai manufacturing SMEs. Various close ended questions related to the concerned study were asked on a five-point Likert scale. Furthermore, this study analyzed the data with the help of Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). Results of the study revealed that both leadership styles and Industry 4.0 have significant role in organization performance. Leadership styles and Industry 4.0 influence positively on job satisfaction and competitive advantage, respectively. Further, job satisfaction and competitive advantage influence positively on business sustainability. Finally, business sustainability significantly improves organization performance. Therefore, the current study has vital importance for practitioners to enhance organization performance through leadership styles and Industry 4.0.

Objective of the study is to determine the factors effecting successful women leadership and to draw a comparison between Thailand and Malaysia. Primary data were collected from both countries. Quantitative research approach was used in this study by using a cross-sectional research design. Population of the study was based on the textile companies of Thailand and Malaysia. Employees of textile companies were selected as the respondents. Partial Least Square (PLS) was used for data analysis. Results of the study found that learning autonomy, emotional intelligence, political differences and organization culture (OC) are the major factor which effect on successful women leadership in both countries. Moreover, in both countries, learning autonomy, emotional intelligence and OC have positive role in successful women leadership, however, political differences effect negatively on successful women leadership. Additionally, there is a difference between both countries, in case of moderating role of political differences and OC. In Thailand, OC has positive role to enhance women leadership through emotional intelligence. In case of Malaysia, political differences weaken the positive relationship between the emotional intelligence and successful women leadership.

There has been remained a supporting linkage between the sustainable performance and the green supply chain through quality management practices. However, the main objective or aim of this research study is to understand the green supply chain and its role in lean manufacturing and analyze its impact on the performance of Thailand’s garment industry, whereas there is a need to analyze the mediating role of lean manufacturing practices (LMP) and green supply management on environmental performance of garment industry. In this case, the data were assembled through a survey questionnaire, in which questions regarding LMP were asked. The selected sample size for this research study was 411 employees that belonged to garment firms in Thailand, in which 56.4% were men and 43.6% were women. The researchers analyzed the data through different techniques and procedures such as confirmatory factors analysis, structural equation modeling (SEM), discriminant validity and other related techniques. The results of the research indicated that there is a significant impact of 4.0 technologies on environmental performance, whereas both of these, the green and the lean management practices also play a significant mediating role, because all the hypothesis are accepted. Moreover, it is recommended for future researchers to use other techniques to analyze data.

Decisions about strategies to be implemented and organization design are important in having competitive advantage for companies. Although this statement widely takes place in management literature, very little research has been done on this subject in Turkey. The aim of this study is to examine the mediating role of competitive strategies in the impact of organizational flexibility on competitive advantage in order to extend about empirical literature of the structure-strategy-competitive advantage paradigm based on the resource-based view (RBV). In this context, the data were collected from the top 500 industrial enterprises in Turkey. The data were tested via structural equation model. The findings of our research show that the direct effect of organizational flexibility on competitive superiority was marginally significant and when three different competitive strategies were included between these two variables in the model, the marginally significant effect of organizational flexibility on the competitive advantage disappeared. In other words, the full mediating role of applied competition strategies in the effect of organizational flexibility on competitive advantage has been identified. Our findings are similar to the findings of other studies that consider organizational structure as a valuable resource and examine the relationship between the structure and the strategy according to the RBV.