Organisational capabilities to navigate the green and digital transition towards industry 5.0.

Abstract

Industry 5.0 (I5.0) reframes industrial transformation around human-centricity, sustainability, and resilience, raising the need for organisations to develop integrated capabilities that enable the green-digital "twin" transition. This study identifies, validates, and prioritises the organisational capabilities required for the shift towards I5.0. A design-oriented research approach is adopted, combining (i) bibliometric mapping and theory integration to derive an initial capability set, (ii) a two-round Delphi study with international experts from industry, policy, and academia to refine and validate the framework, and (iii) the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to structure expert judgements and derive relative priorities. The resulting framework comprises fifteen capabilities organised into four clusters: Digital Foundations, Responsible Transition, Value-Creation Excellence, and Human-Centric Enablers. Delphi findings indicate strong convergence around technology- and transformation-oriented capabilities, while communication and compliance-related capabilities show greater dispersion, reflecting context sensitivity across sectors, maturity levels, and jurisdictions. AHP results confirm that Digital Foundations and Human-Centric Enablers receive the highest overall priority, followed by Value-Creation Excellence and Responsible Transition. Overall, the findings point to a pragmatic capability-building pathway in which digital and human-centric foundations enable the consistent operationalisation of responsible transition goals and scalable value creation. The study contributes an evidence-based capabilities map to support managerial decisions, capability assessment, and policy and education initiatives aligned with I5.0.