Required Competence Development in Higher Education to Manage the Digital Transformation in the Industry: Paricipatory Action Research with Stakeholders Applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process

In this paper, we investigate the process of curriculum design in higher education to address the need for the development of digital competences of industrial engineers. In the light of digital transformation, an increasing amount of pedagogy literature, policy papers, and practitioners call for the development of digital competences. However, concrete approaches to tackle this issue in practice are still scarce. We followed a participatory action research approach together with stakeholders of a university of applied sciences to develop the foundations of a curriculum to equip engineering graduates with additional managerial, social, and psychological insights and approaches to succeed in digital transformation or Industry 4.0 projects in manufacturing companies. In several workshops with undergraduates, faculty, alumnae, researchers, and industry representatives the needs and prospective job profiles of such digital transformation managers were defined. The therefore required competences were prioritized applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) by comparing the necessary knowledge, skills, as well as attitudes and values (KSA). The results first show difficulties in establishing a common understanding of required competences between the stakeholders due to the complexity of the notion of digital transformation. Nevertheless, the stakeholder involvement process and the AHP as decision support can serve as a suitable basis for the design process of engineering curricula, as well as in other contexts.