Shame 4.0: Empirical Evidence of the Importance of Emotions in a Technologising World of Work

The transformation into Industry 4.0 comes with many challenges for organisations all over the world. During the past years, many publications have focused on highlighting the challenges of restructuring, technological defaults, and lack of infrastructure to implement Industry 4.0 transformational challenges. This chapter does not focus on the challenges of Industry 4.0 in terms of hardware or technology, but rather on the emotional aspects of the transformational process. The chapter presents findings from a qualitative study on Industry 4.0 transformational processes and the perspective of managers within a single case study of an engineering organisation. Altogether 16 interviews were conducted on Industry 4.0. This chapter responds to the research question of how managers experience shame in the context of Industry 4.0. It shows that shame, as an often negatively experienced emotion, needs to be taken into account to support a positive and constructive transformation of employees and organisations towards Industry 4.0. Conclusions are drawn on how to deal with negative emotions such as shame, and recommendations are given with regard to future research and practice from an industrial and organisational psychology perspective.