In professional situations, the interactions between digital transformation and empowerment are not well understood. The concept of empowerment, which enables individuals or teams to make responsible decisions about their jobs, is essential for managing the complexity of production. In recent years, empowerment has been closely linked to digital transformation. However, to understand the relationship between technical and social change, a symbiotic approach is necessary.
Research from IAE Paris – Sorbonne Business School takes an ethnographic approach to understand the relationship by studying employee behavior at tire giant Michelin’s Shenyang 2 factory in North-East China, where 3,000 employees produce tens of millions of tires per year.
Exploring behavior
The symbiotic approach considers the interactions between humans and digital technology. Digital technology is framed as an organism that exists in a close partnership with humans. This partnership is defined by co-extension, co-evolution, co-action, and co-dependency mechanisms. The symbiotic relationship between humans and digital technology can be seen in various working situations, such as the e-kanban, the collective internal recruitment process, and the extruder dancer.
During the immersion at Michelin’s plant, the researchers identified seven working situations that involved new interactions between employee involvement and the digital solutions developed. These enrich the conceptual framework of HTSRs (human-technology symbiosis relationships). We also related them to Michelin’s approach to empowerment, which comprises shared objectives, decision-making, problem-solving, and serving the team.
One of the examples they found was the e-kanban, a digital workflow board, developed to help operators visualize the stock levels of different tire models. This new HTSR enables operators to prioritize products based on real-time information displayed at their workstations. This is a co-extension since decisions are based on the information displayed, and co-dependence because the decisions impact the figures on display.
Another example of HTSR involves a collective internal recruitment process. Vacancies are posted as a QR code on a shared WeChat, allowing team members to vote for applicants. The project was improved with several iterations of learning, making it a bottom-up co-evolution project.
Finally, a digital solution called an extruder dancer was developed to monitor the position of the tool measuring the thickness of the rubber layer on a tire, helping operators identify quality issues quickly. Technicians and digital teams worked together to develop this solution, making it a co-extension of HTSR.
Lasting change
At the organizational level, digital transformation and empowerment were developed through strong collaboration between the digital team and the HR team. HR can be renewed as it acts as a co-conductor of symbiotic change.
The digital team and HR team act as strategic partners and drivers of change, playing complementary roles and expertise in the learning dynamic within the plant.
Digital transformation may renew forms of empowerment, but it also means managers can more easily control their employees. Therefore, particular care should be taken when implementing new solutions.
