‘THEY PRETEND IT IS NOT ABOUT PEOPLE’: PERCEPTIONS ON EMOTIONS, SOCIAL SKILLS FOR DIGITAL MANUFACTURING IN AN EMERGING ECONOMY

The 4.0 industry has changed the business landscape worldwide. The new way of producing combined with information technology and database services has promoted changes in the way companies behave, market and allocate their resources. Information technology is the main engine of this change. However, it would be dangerous not to realize that a change of this nature, which so strongly modifies the patterns of production and consumption, would not have an impact on the labor market. New jobs, new functions and new technical and managerial skills will be required. There must be a race in this direction, seeking out for mechanisms to better prepare workers for the 4.0 industry. However, with technological cycles becoming smaller, it is increasingly evident that technical skills will be continuously changed over the coming decades. Therefore, companies need workers with decision-making skills, tied to social and emotional issues, allowing them to be ready for such rapid change environments. Resilient professionals, capable of interacting with the new and competent to deal with conflicts and challenges are the kind of competences companies seek. Thus, this research answers the question: what are the social and emotional skills necessary for the new worker of the future, in the so-called industry 4.0? The study proposes to structure a framework of social and emotional competences that are fundamental to this new era, using empirical data. Using a review of the existing literature and comparing it to interviews with specialists, it is possible to structure a framework and advance in the discussions about the main soft skills to be developed to support new technological transformations and to initiate a discussion on who and how are the stakeholders involved in the responsibility for developing these competences. As main results we identified six competences: creativity, focus on collaboration, motivation, ethics and responsibility, resilience and systemic thinking. The first three are corroborated by previous literature. In contrast, the last three are innovative perspective brought from managers to serve as a starting point for education and training programs on companies focusing social and emotional competences for the global digital transformation.