Beyond Routine – Routine vs. Dynamic Labour Capacity, or: On the Limits of the Task-Based Approach

The discussion on Industry 4.0 tends to rather focus on industrial and manufacturing sectors than on the overarching subject of work digitisation. Of particular interest is a study conducted by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne (2013), which suggests that 47 per cent of the US workforce is replaceable by new digital technology. Bonin (2015) predicts slightly lower numbers, but sees a similar tendency for Germany. Those and other similar studies classify tasks as automatable and/or algorithmisable based on the distinction between routine and non-routine. The lecture shall put a focus on three main points:

• First, the limits of the commonly used notion of routine will be illustrated and wrong conclusions will be discussed, using the Frey/Osborne study as an example.
• Secondly, the BIBB/BAuA employee survey from 2012 will be used to frame thoughts on an index which depicts dynamic experience (work capacity) instead of static routine and therefore provides insights on the limits of automation (Pfeiffer, Suphan 2015).
• On a final point, key results of the AV index with regard to skill levels, professions and individual sectors are presented.