Corporate social responsibility for Industry 4.0

The use of technologies that initiated the Fourth Industrial Revolution has led to numerous changes in the business of enterprises, such as: increased labour productivity due to business process automation, replacement of labour force by robots, disappearance of many traditional occupations and creation of new ones, teleworking, etc. These changes bring numerous challenges for managers of modern companies, such as solving the problem of redundancy due to the reduction of labour needs, retraining of workers in the direction of developing new knowledge and skills, organizing teleworking, creating mobile offices, etc. These challenges require aligning the needs of society with the skills of company managers, who are expected to manage companies in a way that will enable them to responsibly face these challenges and mitigate the social consequences of the digital transformation. Taking into account this challenge, the project team should respond to the following identified needs: updating university study programmes in the field of management with the latest concepts related to corporate social responsibility, transforming these programmes by including technology affected knowledge that Industry 4.0 is based on and linking them to related study programmes at the basic and higher study levels. The general aim of the project is to create an education programme addressing the implications of Industry 4.0 on corporate social responsibility for students of economic specialties at higher education institutions.

The programme will focus on improving interdisciplinary connections for better understanding of the characteristics of Industry 4.0 and on bridging the gaps in preparation of students for the crucial fields it covers.

The project has the following subgoals:

• Identifying gaps in corporate social responsibility programmes in the era of digital transformation and development of Industry 4.0;
• Choice of training materials, pedagogical approaches and auxiliary aids;
• Development of education programmes;
• Preparation of textbook for teaching.

Project participants are:

• D. A. Tsenov Academy of Economics - Bulgaria;
• National Federation of Employers of Disabled People - Bulgaria;
• Accreditation Council for Entrepreneurial and Engaged Universities - Germany;
• Fundacion Universitaria San Antonio - Spain;
• University of Niš - Serbia.

More about the project at: https://csr-project.eu