Distribution of the industry 4.0 concept in the context of institutional theory: A content analysis study

Today, the fourth industrial revolution and Industry 4.0 are interpreted differently by organizations and settled in the organizational field. Today, organizations see the use of Industry 4.0 technologies, which they see as digital transformation and digitalization, as the most important issue. Organizations tend to ceremoniously practice rationalized actions in the organizational field. From this point of view, organizations provide digitalization awards, incentives, etc. They think that they can be accepted in the society and in the organizational field, and they act in this way. In this context, they characterize the institutionalized actions of the actors in the organizational field as legitimate and take action with the idea that "whoever does not adapt to digitalization will perish". This idea needs to be examined in the logic of new institutional theory, which is the most researched theory among organizational theories in recent years. In this context, it has been tried to explain how Industry 4.0 is institutionalized and legitimized in the logic of new institutional theory. 12 reports published by TÜSİAD, MÜSİAD, TOBB, TİM, YASED, TTGV, the members of the Digital Transformation Platform in Industry, which is the subject of our research, and 22 reports prepared by the European Commission, in which the digital transformations of member countries are explained, were tried to be tested with content analysis. With content analysis, answers were sought to the questions of how local and international actors make sense of and legitimize Industry 4.0. The model that we created together with the researches, explained the institutionalization process of Industry 4.0 and contributed to seeing how Industry 4.0 was legitimized in the organizational field. Within the framework of the findings obtained from the research data, the category of economic development was the category with the highest level of economic development, business model, digital transformation and digital technologies in the local and international context. Thus, Industry 4.0 will be objectified with the cooperation ecosystem to be created between university-industry-state and stakeholders for economic development, and organizations will exhibit rationalized behaviors with this ecosystem.