Identification of Intra Organizational Tensions : Ambidexterity Tensions in an ongoing Industry 5.0 Transformation

Sammanfattning

The manufacturing industry is facing the challenge of combining exploratory strategies, such as Industry 5.0 technologies, with traditional quality management methods to create smart factories that enable data-driven decision-making and support sustainability. At the same time, rising competition puts pressure on companies to drive transformation projects effectively and manage internal tensions to maintain their market positions. In practice, this requires new project models and leadership skills capable of handling organizational structure and culture complexity, and the contradictions between stable quality routines and rapidly evolving innovation demands. Such large-scale changes often meet challenges due to organizational tensions, in this case study, between project and quality departments, which fundamentally represent opposing work strategies, where projects aim to create something new within a limited time frame, while quality focuses on maintaining and improving processes over their lifecycle. Given these challenges and the uniqueness of the case, this master’s thesis identifies specific organizational tensions that arise during ongoing industrial transformation. Rather than evaluating transformation efficiency, the study contributes with concrete examples of how such tensions can hinder transformation, insights from which all Industry 5.0 projects can benefit.