Abstract:
Industry 4.0 and 5.0 present comprehensive and complex challenges in the workplace, necessitating policy interventions to guide, protect, and encourage frontline service workers and their skill formation in new forms of work. Informed by this requirement, this research proposes a processual approach to understanding skill changes driven by Industry 4.0 and 5.0 and establishing a robust foundation of skill-related policies. The processual approach conceptualizes work as a series of events in which workers and/or technologies make judgments and take actions to move the process forward. Through inductive theorization, it investigates whether and how technologies impact the judgments or actions made by workers in each event. The processual approach offers a systematic, in-depth, and case-by-case framework for understanding the human-technology interactions in a wide spectrum of work undergoing digital automation. By applying this approach to the case of taxi-driving and ride-hailing, this research underscores the necessity for policy activities that establish and enforce new skill standards, enhance the transparency of algorithms in the workplace, and promote social recognition of emotional, communicative, and digital skills in service work. The approach and findings of this research have broader public policy implications for Industry 4.0 and 5.0. They highlight the importance of deliberative policy processes grounded in thorough investigations of marginalized targeted populations affected by emerging technologies. Such policy processes and regulatory measures should balance the goals of promoting technological and industrial advancement with ensuring social fairness and inclusiveness.
Jack Linzhou Xing is a PhD candidate at Georgia Institute of Technology, specializing in science, technology, and innovation policy. Drawing upon the cases of digital automation, the platform economy, and AI in China and beyond, his research agenda examines the interaction between policy and governance, technological innovation, and labor in an era of Industry 5.0, robotization, and AI ubiquity. It aims to offer a robust interdisciplinary foundation for advancing deliberative policy theory, policy analysis, and policy practice in relation to emerging science and technologies. His research is supported by the Hong Kong SAR General Research Fund (RGC Ref.: 11600724) where he serves as a co-investigator. His work has been published or is under revise and resubmit in leading journals, including Research Policy, Science and Public Policy, Science, Technology & Human Values, Mobilities, and Social Media + Society.
Industry 4.0 and 5.0 present comprehensive and complex challenges in the workplace, necessitating policy interventions to guide, protect, and encourage frontline service workers and their skill formation in new forms of work. Informed by this requirement, this research proposes a processual approach to understanding skill changes driven by Industry 4.0 and 5.0 and establishing a robust foundation of skill-related policies. The processual approach conceptualizes work as a series of events in which workers and/or technologies make judgments and take actions to move the process forward. Through inductive theorization, it investigates whether and how technologies impact the judgments or actions made by workers in each event.