Cătălin Postelnicu, and Sorin Câlea [613260]

Cătălin Postelnicu, and Sorin Câlea /
Montenegrin Journal of Economics, Vol. 15, No. 2 (2019), 195-206

195

‘

The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Global Risks, Local Challenges
for Employment

CĂTĂLIN POSTELNICU1, and SORIN CÂLEA2

1 Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration Department of
Economics, e-mail: catalin. [anonimizat]
2 Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Nap oca, Romania, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration Department of
Economics, e-mail: [anonimizat]
ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT
Received March 02, 2019
Revised from March 27, 2019
Accepted May 23, 2019 Available online June 15, 2019 The authors are convinced that humankind is at the begin-
ning of a new revolution that is fundamentally different from
all previous industrial revolutions. This fourth revolution is characterized by the rise of new technologies which impact all disciplines, economies and industries. The new technolo-gies could improve dramatically economic efficiency at the
industry level and could change the workforce behaviour. In this article, we try to emphasize how societies can adapt the new technologies to the actual human needs, in order to capture their benefits and, at the same time, regenerate the natural environment. We also argue that information tech-nologies and robotics are within the control of all of us, and man is able to dialogue with intelligent machines without any need to change the basic idea about what means to be a human. JEL classification :
F00

DOI: 10.14254/1800-5845/2019.15-2.15
Keywords :
fourth industrial revolution,
industry 4.0, unemployment, jobs, economic globalization.

INTRODUCTION
The 46th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF, 2016a) held in January 2016 at
Davos, Switzerland, addressed an extremely important issue concerning the Fourth Industrial Revo-lution. Starting from the report presented by K. Schwab (2016a), many leading figures of the world’s financial elite dealt at length with the impact that the Fourth Industrial Revolution , still in its
infancy, might have on global business and on hu man society in general. Most addresses revolved
around the following question: Is the world economy prepared to cope with this phenomenon or
not?
So far, the literature (Hermann et al., 2018, p. 1) has not adopted a unanimously accepted
definition of this complex phenomenon in full swing. However, it is believed (Dombrowsky and
Wagner, 2014, p. 100) that this industrial revo lution is the combination of economies and scale
and economies of scope to generate a fusion of new technologies which, to a great extent, turn

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Vol. 15, No. 2 (2019), 195-206

Cătălin Postelnicu, and Sorin Câlea /
Montenegrin Journal of Economics, Vol. 15, No. 2 (2019), 195-206
196into production processes monitored by computers, internet of things and cloud computing. Their
greatest effect is the development of smart factories (Schwab, 2016b, par. 6.11), which amounts
to fundamental changes in all sub-markets of the world economy, starting with the labour market.
Therefore, it is believed (WEF, 2016b, p. 1) that in the near future over seven million jobs are to go
worldwide and the tasks will be completely carried out by industrial robots. The most affected will be the developed, highly industrialized countries. On the other hand, one cannot overlook some positive effects of the new industrial revolution, namely, the creation of another two million jobs in sectors such as building and programming robots and industrial machines as well as process digi-
talization and supervision. The scope of this phenom enon is even wider since in the second half of
2015 the manufacturing sector in Europe alone totalled about 2 million companies providing 33
million jobs (European Parliament, 2015, p. 2). In light of these facts, the consequences of job losses could be even greater due to connections in the value chain with the other upstream and d o w n s t r e a m s t a k e h o l d e r s i n e a c h b r a n c h o f i n d u stry and due to the streamlining of various in-
house activities.
It is quite difficult to foresee what the world ec onomy will look like in 2040-2045 in light of the
rapidly changing IT sector and of the fact that the line between the work done by robots and the
work done by man becomes increasingly blurred as the two coexist in integrated production sys-
tems in the form of smart factories and smart production systems (WEF, 2016b, p. 1). The first industrial revolution started around 1780 (Schwab, 2015) and lasted almost a century, its main
invention being the steam engine created at the beginning of the 18
th century and later improved
by James Watt. The second industrial revolution started in the second half of the 19th century fol-
lowing the discovery of new sources of energy (the electric power, in particular) and the improve-ment of oil and gas technologies (Pearson and Foxo n, 2012). These sources of energy fostered the
rapid development of important branches of industry such as electrical engineering, the chemical
industry, the automotive industry etc. Consequently, at the beginning of the 20
th century Henry
Ford set up the first assembly line which triggered the industrial mass production (Alizon et al., 2009).
This was followed by the third industrial revolu tion, which is now on the wane. The third indus-
trial revolution was characterized by the phase-out of energy intensive industries and the appear-ance of new sub-branches such as electronics, mechanical engineering, precision mechanics, ad-
vanced processing of raw materials, and, in particular, the appearance of information technology,
the Internet and the interdependence created by IT in the world economy, changing the interna-
tional environment into a real “global village” (Fitzsimmons, 1994, pp. 295-297). This evolution set the stage for the use of digital technology and computerization of the manufacturing industry, lead-ing to the concept of “smart factory” (MacDougall, 2014, p. 10). This enables the provision of per-
sonalized products and services and the ongoing adap tation of the offering to new market realities
and to customers’ needs and demands. The technical conditions created by the third industrial revolution paved the way for the digital economy , which consists in reindustrialization based on
automation and cybernetics (V ătămănescu et al., 2017; V ătămănescu et al., 2018). This laid the
ground for the appearance of th e fourth industrial revolution.
It is digital technologies that enabled this leap in quality, which revolutionized entire business
sectors. Digital technologies operate in the manufact uring industry as well as in other fields of ad-
vanced research (medicine, aviation, spatial missi ons etc.). The new industrial revolution will use
digital technologies on a large scale, with robotics contributing greatly to the increase of work effi-ciency and productivity (Berger, 2019, p. 8). The effect of these changes will be seen in the sub-
stantial reduction of production costs and of the period between the approval of a patent and its
application in the manufacturing processes. It is true that, due to their complexity, the new tech-nologies are expensive in the beginning. However, they will pay for themselves much faster due to their higher economic return and to the higher added value given to the new products. Moreover, digital technologies are contagious as the transfer of know-how ta kes place almost simultaneously
across enterprises.

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197The present study aims to highlight the aspects related to, as well as the relevance and im-
portance of the implementation of the new industrial revolution from a theoretical and a practical
perspective. The literature is both scarce and unsure as to the approach to the concept of industry
4.0. The approach so far has been somewhat futu ristic, with authors with positive expectations
and also with researchers who foresee a general collapse of the labour market. Being aware of these shortcomings, the authors deal objectively with the industry 4.0 concept, stressing not only its evolution, but also its multiple challenges and implications. The second section of the paper addresses the evolution of the industrial revolution from an economic and societal perspective. The third section describes the link between Industry 4.0 and the “smart factory” concept and,
finally, the fourth section deals with the role of jobs in the context of Industry 4.0, with focus on
companies’ challenges and responsibilities agains t a backdrop of technological advancement. The
paper ends with conclusions and theore tical and managerial implications.

1. THE NEXT INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: AN ECONOMIC AND SOCIETAL
APPROACH THROUGH THE LENS OF CURRENT THINKING
In his book The Fourth Industrial Revolution , presented at the World Economic Forum in Janu-
ary 2016, K. Schwab (2016b, p. 1) strongly assert s that mankind is at the beginning of a new in-
dustrial revolution (the fourth in chronological or der) which will fundamentally alter how people live.
The fourth industrial revolution is different from the previous ones not only because it is character-
ized by a range of new technologies, completely different from the already known technologies, but also due to its capacity to put together all breakthroughs in natural sciences. Schwab (2016b, par. 7.7) analyses in a historic context the profound and systemic changes o ccurring over the years,
which fostered the appearance of supercomputers. He also deals with the impact of these inven-
tions and innovations on economic growth, employment and the nature of human work (labour substitution) (Schwab, 2016b, par. 13.5). This leads to an increase in consumption while using
fewer resources, a fundamental principle of sust ainability and responsible consumption (Dabija
and Bejan, 2018). Today, collaborative innovation in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science etc. is about to give rise to an im-portant landmark, namely, the fusion of all technologies and the reformation of the entire produc-tion system. There are at least three reasons why Schwab believes we witness the beginning of a new industrial revolution different from the previous ones, and these are (Schwab, 2016b: par. 5.3ff.):
 Velocity: unlike the previous industrial revolutions, this one is evolving at an exponential rather
than linear pace;
 Breadth and depth: we will have to reconsider an entire range of paradigms that we are familiar
with;
 Systems impact on society as a whole.

In an interesting book titled The Industries of the Future , another author, A. Ross (2016), pro-
vides a fascinating picture of the future of the industry where new technologies will change the
world. Certainly, it is almost impossible to accu rately predict what will happen in the immediate or
the distant future. However, by adopting the author’s systemic and strategic thinking, we can glimpse certain future trends and clearly understand the economic, political and social forces be-hind these trends. From this perspective, Ross makes a detailed and exciting presentation of the profound changes about to take place by the large-scale use of industrial robots in the various
stages/processes of the industrial production, as well as of the possible impact of their use on
economic development, employment, distribution of wealth and global trade. Without making ex-plicit reference to the appearance of a fourth in dustrial revolution, the researcher skilfully de-
scribes the main technology trends and explains the implications of the new technologies in the technological advancement of the future decades. At the same time, the author anticipates some

Cătălin Postelnicu, and Sorin Câlea /
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198opportunities that human society can take advantage of with its entry into a new information age
(Ross, 2016) and into a new wave of innovation. Certainly, future prospection raises many ques-
tions and even arouses feelings of unease or disquiet. However, Ross indicates that man-
kind/society has the capacity to survive without difficulty in a cyber-dimensional world that we have to prepare ourselves in advance to meet, understand and adapt to so as to get the best ad-vantages as fast as possible (Ross, 2016, 186ff).
A similar opinion is expressed by Zittrain in his book The Future of the Internet – And How to
Stop It . The author believes that the progress in terms of the spread of the Internet in people’s
lives is unstoppable (Zittrain, 2008, p.153) as it is one of the main drivers that will alter completely
future technologies and will serve as foundation of the fourth industrial revolution. Zittrain (2008,
p. 84) believes that the Internet is “generator of technologies” as it can be used in many creative ways and within strategies for the future development of society (Zittrain, 2008, 175ff.). As regards the future of professions against the background of the use of new technologies, R. Susskind and D. Susskind (2015, pp. 46-100) predict the disa ppearance of many of today’s professions and
provide an approximate description of the systems that will replace them. They believe that current professions are obsolete, opaque and inaccessible in the long term, and develop parallel scenarios
according to which certain professi ons will evolve under the impact of the new industrial revolution.
In his book Rise of Robots: Technology and the Threat of Jobless Future , M. Ford (2015) ad-
dresses the complex issue of the jobs of the future and seeks to identify the profile of those who will perform these jobs. He states that artificial intelligence changes even the best jobs into obso-lete professions. For instance, even programmers will be replaced by robots and various software
versions (Ibid., p. 16). The continuous progress in this field will put an end to the blue- and white-collar jobs (Ibid., p. 83), leading to huge unem ployment and economic inequality. Consequently,
the question is, what will the future bring: prosperity and social welfare or catastrophic inequality
along with economic insecurity (Ibid., p. 284), imbalances and societal upheavals.
The negative and positive aspects of the new technologies in the near future are analysed by
E. Brynjolfsson and A. McAfee (2014). According to them, the new digital technologies will be able to diagnose diseases more accurately than do ph ysicians themselves, and carry out tasks which so
far have only been viewed within human competen ce. As all types of professions will change sub-
stantially, companies will have to adapt to the new requirements. Education will play a major role in
finding the best strategies for survival in a highly competitive environment because it will be able to
train individuals to cope with the demands typical of the new economy (Ibid., pp. 187; 249-255). In
general, the two authors convey a more optimistic view than does Ford (2015, p. 176) who states
that we are in an era of technological optimism blended with deep sociological pessimism likely to impact negatively on society and its development.
Dobs et al. (2015) make an ample analysis of the main forces behind the present accelerated
technological changes. They state that mankind go es through a transition period in which econom-
ic and social forces operate to change the trad itional production patter ns and to produce funda-
mental changes in all fields with the aid of the technologies that we will have to get accustomed to
and work with in the near future. M. Anissimov (2015) attempts to answer some questions about the development of artificial intelligence in the future, the extent to which it will represent a threat to mankind and/or to various societies, the importance of nanotechnology etc.
2. A NEW INDUSTRIAL ERA
The fourth industrial revolution has lately been known as Industry 4.0 , a commonly accepted
name given by German practitioners and researchers (Rojko, 2017, p. 80) who aimed to increase the competitiveness of the current manufacturing industry by integrating cyber-physical systems
into the production processes. Cyber-physical systems are represented by smart machines con-
nected to the Internet (Monostori et al., 2016, p. 621) and their raison d’être is based on the fact

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199that many industrial units waste a lot of energy during week-ends and non-working days. This is the
opposite of the concept of smart factory , whose purpose is the fusion of the virtual and the real
world by means of cyber-physical systems with th e result that technological processes are inte-
grated with new forms of business organization (GTAI, 2018, p. 10).
The potential of the smart factory production system is undeniably greater than that of any
previous industrial system. This production system with wholly integrated cyber-physical parts is
able to change the very nature of the human work by performing all the simple and repetitive oper-ations calling for less skill. There is nothing ne w about automated systems as they have been in
operation until now. This time, however, it is about programming an entire set of machines able to
communicate between themselves. Due to the huge power generated by such systems, many voic-
es have expressed concern that manpower will be put in the shade with dire consequences for employment. The fear of job losses has been echoed for many years and much debated through-out the third industrial revolution. J. Rifkin (2011, p. 22) demonstrates how the wide spread of automation has led, not to job losses, but to the creation of tens of millions of new jobs. Further arguments in support of this thesis are provided by the International Labour Organization (ILO, 2013, p. 24), which shows that total manpower for the global economy as a whole has not de-
creased, but, on the contrary, increased.
In the new technological era ushered in by the fourth industrial revolution, workers will be
completely freed from boring and repetitive jobs and, instead, will perform creative activities typical of a smart era in which machines communicate between, and coordinate each other. Based on this reality, it is believed that mankind is heading for “ a world without work ” (Thompson, 2015), which,
of course, is an exaggeration. J. Barrat (2013, p. 392) expresses himself in a similar vein, eager to
herald “ the end of the human era ” as a result of the large-scale use of artificial intelligence. So far,
artificial intelligence has had a rival: the human being. However, their coexistence seems no long-
er possible (Ibid., p. 531) as the new industrial revolution increases significantly the quality of work and brings about profound structural changes in a ll fields. However, it seems absurd to believe
that human work will disappear altogether. This would mean that all members of society will be left
unemployed one day. International Labour Organization (ILO, 2013, p. 10) shows that in 2013 there were 3 billion employed people worldwide and only 202 million registered jobless people. Statistics (ILO, 2018, p. 6) mention that global unemployment rate in 2017 remained steady at
about 5.6%, which represented about 192.7 million people. This was a clear decrease in unem-
ployment by comparison with previous years. Curren t reality contradicts the authors’ futurist vision
about the changes in the social structures, but this does not rule out rapid changes caused by the adoption of new ways of production organization based on the Industry 4.0 principles.
The extent to which the fourth industrial revolution ( Industry 4.0 ) has already started cannot
be stated with certainty. It is, however, in a period of transition and represents a new field which, in part, has been insufficiently explored both theoretically and practically. The trend towards humaniz-
ing the virtual environment and towards the creation of hardware structures followed by software
adaptation and diversification calls for periods of adaptation and joint efforts to understand the
potential advantages of the technological evolution. Therefore, it is premature to state how the human-machine relationship will evolve in the future. However, several trends begin to take shape. The real world of production is about to change into a huge information system able to redefine the
values regarded hitherto as fundamental, and to evolve from the “knowledge economy” to a “glob-al market of scientific information” (Br ătianu and V ătămănescu, 2018). This only seems applicable
at the moment to certain fields of scientific progress, with trends towards generalization mostly in
the case of industrial systems.
The new industrial revolution will likely reduce manufacturing outsourcing , that is, the reloca-
tion of industrial activities to other geographical areas will taper off because cheap labour force will no longer be a competitive advantage in the production proper (Postelnicu and Dabija, 2017). In-stead, outsourcing tends to continue as a means of harnessing the available talents in fields like

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200software resources development, engineering and services associat ed with production (Davila,
2018). Smart machines will boost productivity to a level where labour costs no longer matter.
Industry 4.0 targets not only the industry but also the entire global socio-economic system. For
the first time since the appearance of sustainable development , which has recently been dealt
with at length in the literature (Cîrstea et al., 2018; Dabija et al., 2018b; Stock et al., 2018; Tiron-
Tudor et al., 2018), an optimal solution has been found for the concept of industrial revolution 4.0, without being called in question because of opposing or disturbing factors. However, it is difficult to foresee whether the technical and scientific progress will be able to prevent excessive wealth con-centration and maintain the gaps in the global economy. The revolutionary technology of the 21
st
century will unavoidably produce an increase in ec onomic inequality even for the mere fact that
many current professions will become obsolete, leading to a new type of division of labour between highly skilled people and those stuck in outdated professions (see also Jabbar, 2017). This process
will extrapolate at international level, deepening the already existing gaps between national econ-
omies. Gaining scientific and technological know ledge depends crucially by investments in re-
search and innovation. Consequently, the most de veloped countries have at the moment almost
exclusive ownership of the technological means by which to create a real fusion of the virtual and
the real world. The so-called smart factory is a cornerstone of all traditional industries known so
far. In other words, the key element of this evolution will be the presence of integrated engineering
into all production processes, more precisely, a self-regulatory (Berkeley, 2019) and self-improving
cyber-physical system. This will enable machines not only to interact with one another, but also to make choices free from human intervention.
In his book titled Makers. The New Industrial Revolution , C. Anderson (2012, pp. 12; 174)
mentions the appearance of the digital culture or the Web culture which is about to change the
future of mankind. The spread of the Internet and social media (Dabija et al., 2017; Dabija et al.,
2018a) over the last years paved the way for a new industrial era in which inventions and innova-
tions occur at a breathtaking pace. Most of the ch anges in the production system were triggered by
great scientific breakthroughs which surprise through their effects and implications. The new in-dustrial revolution, however, opened the door for a long range of inventions and innovations that
will change radically the entire system of material production. We also have in mind the fact that current inventions and innovations have fostered the appearance of artificial intelligence and the digital revolution. Del Monde (2013) wonders if artifi cial intelligence will truly benefit people and if
machines will become more intelligent than man. In our opinion, such concerns are essential in the
context of social and economic changes brought about by the application of the principles of the new industrial revolution which is about to start. Essentially, the effects of the new Industry 4.0
production systems will, from a certain perspective, produce changes not only in the man-artificial
intelligence relationship but also in the very concept of “robot” as the new types of professions become feasible.
Due to the speedy advancement of the technical and scientific progress, the capacity of ma-
chines to make decisions by themselves will render them somewhat autonomous in the relation-
ship with man (Chen, 2013; Hozdic, 2015). L. Muehlhauser (2013) claims that in the not very dis-tant future, artificial intelligence will evolve very quickly and surpass human intelligence. The peril is that mankind might not be prepared for such a radical change of paradigm. However, it is im-
possible for artificial intelligence to be completely separated from the human intelligence, at least as long as humans will be the main providers of material and intellectual resources able to feed
this interaction. The new revolution was furthered, from its infancy, by the individual’s economic
needs, in his or her attempt to solve the increasingly complex problems of the physical reality. D.
Mindell (2015) proposes a somewhat opposite a pproach and makes convincing arguments accord-
ing to which man will be able to control the robots of the future and their artificial intelligence, no matter how sophisticated, will not be able to surpass human intelligence (Ibid.). Thus, the so-called autonomy of robots seems to be a mere myth and continues to serve as a source of inspiration and
innovation. Similar opinions are expressed by J. He aton (2013, pp. 2-4) who shows that artificial

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201intelligence has been created for people, not against them. S. Armstrong (2014, pp. 6-7) starts
from the same question: what wi ll happen when machines become smarter than people? Ponder-
ing over this question, the researcher concludes that, should machines happen to become (almost)
as smart as humans, then many ethical and techno logical problems will arise and need solving.
However, we are not yet prepared for this (Ibid., p. 7) as the very concept of intelligence is still be-
ing debated.

3. THE FUTURE OF JOBS
In addition to other important documents, the World Economic Forum also issued the report on
the future of jobs (WEF, 2016b) in close connection with the debates on the main theme of the industrial revolution 4.0. The appearance of arti ficial intelligence will have an unprecedented im-
pact not only on the future business models, but also on the labour market (WEF, 2016b, p. 1). Consequently, the report was titled in agreement with the topic being discussed, that is, the level of
skill and the workforce strategy in the context of Industry 4.0 . Thus, while some professions face
the threat of becoming redundant, others will rapidly become very important. In many countries and industries, the most in-demand occupations di d not exist ten years ago. According to some
estimates (WEF, 2016b, p. 1), about 65% of children entering primary school today will end up working in new types of jobs that don’t yet exist. Therefore, it is highly important for decision-makers to be able and even bold enough to find the most appropriate solutions to anticipate how the future job landscape will change and to prepare the new generations so as to cope with these
radical changes. This does not mean, however, that the transition to a new level of workforce quali-
fication will be free from risks and difficulties. Th e future of jobs depends strongly on other social,
economic and demographic factors, such as the disruptive changes to business model in almost
all industrial sectors and the increase in demand fo r highly skilled labour force. To this effect, the
International Labour Organization (ILO, 2013) estimates that, by 2020, more than 300 million new highly skilled jobs will have to be created in order to provide the new generations with job opportu-nities. The Future of Jobs Report (WEF, 2016b, pp. 1-2) stresses very clearly that current trends
could lead to a net employment impact of about 5.1 million jobs lost due to disruptive labour mar-
ket changes, especially over the period 2015-2020. Added to this is the effect of losing 7.1 million jobs, two thirds of which are concentrated in office and administrative roles. At the same time, the forum also mentions that about 2 million jobs could be created in the fields of IT and advanced technologies. Given the World Forum officials’ concern for the consequences of this new revolution in the context of mankind’s undergoing full changes triggered by the start of this global-scale phe-
nomenon, a similar report was issued in 2018, where the fundamental changes about to affect
jobs and professions are stressed again. Thus, during the 2018-2022 period, the share of emerg-
ing professions of the total labour market is set to increase from 16% (in 2018) to 27% (in 2022),
whereas the employment share of declining jobs is set to decrease from 31 % to 21% for the same period (WEF, 2018, p. 8).
The report on the labour market changes and the characteristics of the new industrial revolu-
tion is based on current data, but the forecasts and, in particular, the effects of these changes on the evolution of labour force are only now being perceptible. We believe that the technologies of the future will not undermine the creation of new jobs, but rather they will foster the appearance of
new forms of entrepreneurship and cause a shift in the working patterns of current generations.
There is, of course, the fear that robots will steal people’s jobs because they will have a certain
degree of autonomy. In reality, this is a flawed re asoning because artificial intelligence should not
be equalled with the sovereign intelligence whic h only the human being possesses. Man will still
control the incorporation of artificial intelligence into machines. Moreover, whether these machines will borrow some moral values is debatable, it’s an idea still belonging to the realms of fantasy. Should it happen, it will of necessity have to be harmonized with the ethical principles of the mod-
ern society. The creative potential of robots will be limited by the software created by men. The so-

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202called robopsychology according to which robots will be able to carry out intellectual work in the
future is pure fantasy (Chen, 2013; Hozdic, 2015 ; Nitsch and Popp, 2019). No matter how sophis-
ticated they become, robots will only be able to increase humans’ capacity to think and create, not
to remove it entirely. The human cognitive po tential will remain superior to that of any intelli-
gent/smart machine. Robots will never be able to share values such as ethics, empathy, emotions,
affinity and antipathy typical of the human being only. Likewise, they will never become physical persons with legal rights. All these aspects are just pure science fiction speculation. Over the years, there were many significant and revolutionary landmarks in the history of natural sciences. Howev-er, man could not be sidelined by his own machines.
Finally, the simplest question that needs answering is the following: does the new industrial
revolution (the fourth according to current calculation) create more jobs or destroy more jobs? The answer is not as simple because our choice is between the pessimistic outlook according to which
new technologies increase unemployment because the machines of the future will replace people in the production process, and the optimistic outlook according to which the new industrial revolu-
tion will create more jobs that it will destroy. We can
only choose the second and our choice is
based on the following arguments:
– computers and industrial robots will only operate based on, or following the interaction with
people;
– the so-called tacit knowledge about an individual’s experience over the years cannot be
transferred to robots and computers;
– for many years to come, robots will only perform simple and repetitive tasks, whereas oper-
ations calling for more complex knowledge and in volving a high level of creativity and inno-
vation will be conducted by man alone;
– for the reasons above, there seems very little likelihood of machines replacing the human
being in such operations.
The pessimistic outlook of the 2016 report on the future of jobs is more pronounced in its final
part (WEF, 2016b: 8-9) where it mentions the impact of new technologies on labour force. The envisaged result will be the creation of a limited number of new jobs and the loss of another 7 mil-
lion obsolete jobs, which, according to estimates, leads to a negative balance of jobs. However, the new 2018 report puts forward the notion of offset, bringing the balance of jobs on a much more optimistic side, at least up to the year 2022. We dare say that such positive adjustments are not
new in the global economy as they are used in various fields, not only for the global labour market.
Long before the World Economic Forum (the 2016 meeting and documents, in particular), the eco-
nomic literature featured some papers in which “the end of work” was being announced. Among others, we have first in mind Rifkin’s book (1995) bearing this very title The End of Work , in which
the author starts from the fact that many “obsolete” professions disappeared and reaches the conclusion that mankind entered an “end of work” era (Rifkin, 1995, pp. 3-15). In a globalized world, more and more countries have to cope with growing unemployment. However, Rifkin turns more optimistic towards the end of the book, avoi ding a conclusion in terms of a looming social
and economic catastrophe. He only explains how the economic collapse could be avoided by using
the technological potential existing in various lo cations (Rifkin, 1995, pp. 221-293). Such notable
contributions are typical of the transition period of the global economy in parallel with the imple-mentation of the principles of the new industrial revolution.
International Labour Organization (ILO, 2018, p. 15) shows that unemployment rate remains
relatively high in developed states such as those in North America (USA and Canada), with 8.3 per cent in 2018 and 8.5 per cent in 2019, or in Northern, Southern and Western Europe (ILO, 2018:
24), with about 17.7 per cent in 2018 and 17 per cent in 2019. These data are not the outcome of
austerity policies alone or of the effects of a not yet completely defused economic crisis, but also of the new industrial revolution well underway. In fact, an older ILO report showed that in 2019 about 45 per cent (ILO, 2016, p. 17) of the global labour force might become vulnerable because of the

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Montenegrin Journal of Economics, Vol. 15, No. 2 (2019), 195-206

203new technologies. The same percentage, with slight variations, appears in subsequent reports of
the organization. As expected, most of the relative ly high percentage of vulnerable workforce is
attributed to developing countries. Given that every year about 40 million people worldwide are
expected to get a job, then about 600 million new jobs should be created in the global economy by 2030 (United Nations, 2015; ILO, 2016). This is very unlikely to be achieved in the context of the
current mechanisms of the global economy.
The internationalization of the labour market has brought about an increase in unemployment
and labour force migration. Currently, hundreds of millions of workers migrate from country to
country seeking work, many of them having no papers and no social protection. These migrants are
the product of economic underdevelopment, and not the outcome of the new industrial revolution
which in principle creates technological unemployme nt in developed countrie s. In these developed
countries the dilemma between economic growth and employment is a topic which has featured highly on the agenda of academics for many years. Therefore, in the context of the fourth industrial revolution, unemployment will continue to be the “hidden trap” of the economic growth and a so-cial scourge against which appropriate solutions must be identified. This is even more imperative as unemployment takes multiple forms in modern economies as well. Some of these forms of un-
employment are not reflected in official statistics. This is the case of the so-called hidden unem-
ployment affecting mostly the people in rural areas who often live below the level of subsistence,
or the people who work significantly fewer hour s than they had wished (the underemployed).

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
All the previous succeeding industrial revolutions improved in some way the welfare of the
population, giving consideration to the historical context in which these revolutions took place. Today’s fourth industrial revolution takes forward the uninterrupted flow of inventions and innova-
tions designed over the last decades, and capitali zes on them at a superior level. Thus, a sudden
shift took place from the heavy industry to the almost invisible industries based on high capacity
microprocessors. However, the consequences of the new technological revolution are a source of
unease for both the economically advanced societ ies and the less developed countries. We believe
that the careful analysis of these consequences, depending on the level of economic development,
is a challenge for the economic theoreticians faced with the need to consider new variables whose influence depends on societal tr ansformations. As expressed by some World Economic Forum par-
ticipants (WEF, 2016a), mankind is about to enter insufficiently explored territory. The impact of
this new revolution on the various activity sectors is yet uncertain. It will certainly produce both positive and negative effects. Therefore, one of the problems on the agenda of most researchers and which could represent one of the limits of current economic research is this: what will the new
industrial revolution offer—welfare opportunities for all people or greater economic inequality? Ex-
cessive globalization with unpredictable conseque nces on the human beings is already looming.
How this system will change our 21
st century working pattern and how people will be able to take
advantage of this process, which will affect fundamentally the economic practice, remains to be seen. The studies have shown so far (Spinelli and Luke, 2018) that the failure to anticipate in time the demand for new professions leads to heavy to ll taken by the changes occurring in society.

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