Industry 4.0 and meaning of work; An intergenerational study

Industry 4.0 was announced in 2011 as "Manifest of Industry 4.0" in Hannover. Meaning of work and generations are the concepts that have been studied many times before. It can be seen through a literature research that, there is no study about the working life which has been reshaped with Industry 4.0, and this is the reason of this study's design. The purpose of this study is; Industry 4.0, the meaning of the study and the expectations from the working life information, predictions, to determine the meanings they are attributed and the comparison between generations. 6 Hypotheses were formed for the purpose of the thesis. A questionnaire consisting of 3 different scales and demographic questions, was applied to 435 individuals. The research was analyzed with IBM SPSS 22.0 program. In addition, since there is no scale related to Industry 4.0, a development study has been carried out. The results of the pilot application were analyzed in IBM SPSS 22.0 program and the cronbach's alpha value was 0.75. The explanatory factor analysis (EFA) of the Industry 4.0 Scale was also examined and, as a result of the explanatory factor analysis, the KMO (Kaiser-Meyer Olkin) value of the scale was 0.714 and Barlett's Test of Sphericity values Χ²=1971.176, p<0,001. It means that are statistically significant. Kruskal Wallis test was used for multiple independent group comparisons and Dunn test was used in paired comparisons. The results were discussed through medians. Pearson correlation analysis has been done in order to examine the correlation between the generations of the concepts of the expectation of working life and meaning of work. According to the results of the study, it was concluded that There has not been found any difference in perceptions of generations on the meaning of work. Additionally, no differences have been detected about expectations of working life among generations. Moreover, there is no evidence found in the meaning attributed to the work of X-Y generations. However, there was a statistically significant positive weak correlation in Y generation members between the expectations of working life and the meaning of work. Finally, it has been concluded that there is no intergenerational difference in the knowledge obtained about Industry 4.0, but there is a statistically significant difference in the X-Z generations of robotic developments.