The Landscape of Scientific Discussions on the Competencies 4.0 Concept in the Context of the 4th Industrial Revolution—A Bibliometric Review

Abstract

The concept of Competencies 4.0 stems from a broader term of the 4th Industrial Revolution, also named Industry 4.0, which dates back to 2011, when the German Federal Government announced its high-tech strategy and policy towards increasing the competitiveness of the German economy during the Hannover Fair. These terms and concepts have been thoroughly and extensively discussed, analysed, and researched by experts within various scientific disciplines such as management, economy, psychology, education, human resources, informatics and systemics ever since. Due to the relevance of the Industry 4.0 concept in relation to current socio-economic challenges worldwide, the growing interest on the part of researchers and the proliferation of the above-mentioned terms in the literature, a network of patterns and relations has formed constituting a scientific landscape of the whole phenomenon. Accordingly, the aim of the analysis in this article is to map the landscape of scientific discussions on Competencies 4.0 in the context of the 4th Industrial Revolution. So far, some of the aspects of this landscape have been researched with the use of various databases, search engines and software in order to process and visualise retrieved data. All of these tools have their advantages but also their shortcomings. This research uses the Scopus database and the author’s own algorithm to process the data. The results of the analysis provide a point of reference for scholars, practitioners, managers, policy and decision makers from various fields who search for sources which define Competencies corresponding to current and future socio-economic challenges in the context of the 4th Industrial Revolution.