Onur Özveri

The Potential Effect of Industry 4.0 on the Literature About Business Processes: A Comparative Before-and-After Evaluation Based on Scientometrics

Industry 4.0 is a collective term that covers many modern automation systems, data exchanges and production technologies representing the fourth revolution in the industry. This revolution allows for the collection and analysis of all the data that can affect production processes, revealing more efficient business models, and creating a structure that will completely change the production-consumption relations. When the bibliometric information of related publications are examined, it is clear that the concept of Industry 4.0 is beginning to be thoroughly debated in 2010 and later (n: 418, 81.48%), and every day of the post-publication period there is an increasing tendency. These developments affecting all areas of the industry can also be considered to affect the studies on the management of the business processes. This study aims to demonstrate how the developments in industry 4.0 are reflected in the studies related to business processes within the scope of the literature. In this context, by taking 2010 breaking point, it is investigated whether a change in the scientometric structure of the research articles related to the business processes after this year and whether the changes are compatible to the concepts conceived together with the concept of industry 4.0. As a necessary data source, the research articles that are focused on business processes in the Web of Science (WoS) database were collected, and the scientometric analyses were conducted on this data for different time intervals. For the comparisons, the similar the data on the concept of industry 4.0 were also collected and analysed. According to the search attempts on WoS on 1st of April, 2018, 6255 research articles were obtained using the phrase “business process” where 3044 of them were published in 2010 or later. Various citation mining techniques were used in the scope of scientometrics to reveal demographics and linkages. Findings show that there are significant differences before and after the year 2010.