Does Industry 5.0 Reproduce Gender (In)equalities at Organisations? Understanding the Interaction of Human Resources and Software Development Teams in Supplying Human Capitals

Abstract

The aim of this study is to illustrate the significance of human resources and software development teams in the process of value co-creation, specifically in the provision of human capital within the framework of Industry 5.0. This investigation takes into account ethical considerations, machine ethics, and gender inequalities. In order to achieve this aim, we conduct semi-structured in-depth qualitative interviews with 12 Human Resources Specialists and 12 Computer Engineers in large scale organisations in Turkey. As a theoretical lens, we adopt modified grounded theory to explore the interaction of teams for demonstrating how they design and manage the digital process by considering the human–machine collaboration aspect of Industry 5.0. Based on the interviews, there are three main themes in the present research: digitalisation in tracking personnel data, ensuring ethical actions in digitalisation of organisational process, and reflections of digitalisation to gender inequality. Since studies on diversity and industry 5.0 are scarce, this research demonstrates the ethical and adverse aspects of industry 5.0, and how it reflects to gender inequality in organisations.