Making work meaningful in Industry 5.0: institutional arrangements shaping blue-collar work

This paper examines the transition toward Industry 5.0 (I5.0) by foregrounding the role of institutional arrangements in shaping meaningful blue-collar work. Building on prior research, we recontextualize six dimensions of meaningful work—Competence, Autonomy, Embodiment, Relatedness, Beneficence, and Identity—within industrial manufacturing. Moving beyond individual experiences, we identify twelve institutionalized social structures—four normative, three regulative, and five cultural-cognitive—that enable and constrain meaningful work through shared rules, norms, and beliefs. Introducing a multi-level perspective, the study further explores ways in which emerging technologies can reinforce or reconfigure these meso-level arrangements to sustain micro-level experiences of meaningful work and support macro-level transition to I5.0 through socio-technical alignment. Drawing on an abductive analysis of interview data (n = 31) across nine Finnish manufacturing companies, we develop a conceptual framework that supports technology adoption while strengthening work meaningfulness. The findings provide practical guidance for organizations and contribute to advancing scholarly debates on sustainable, human-centered futures of industrial work.