Organizational Capabilities as the Critical Determinants for a Successful Adoption and Implementation of Fourth Industrial Revolution Technologies in Manufacturing Industries

The advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution has induced radical and abrupt changes to existing business models, challenged established business rules and in some instances brought discontinuities to many industries. The complexity of the Fourth Industrial Revolution can be illustrated by the technology trends and agility associated with it. In addition, companies require new “clockspeed” and flexibility to deal with dynamic Fourth Industrial Revolution technological innovations. Thus, there arise a need to understand organizational capabilities for coping with brought about by Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies and formulate frameworks and guidelines for creating new organizational spaces where those capabilities can be developed. The main objective of this paper is to conduct a hybrid of integrative literature review and exploratory study to determine why organizational capabilities are important for the Fourth Industrial Revolution adoption and implementation in the manufacturing industries. This paper illustrates possible benefits and impacts of reconfiguring the organizational capabilities viewed from the J-curve methodology as well as a proposed approach for managing organizational capabilities for the Fourth Industrial Revolution technological innovations.