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Robotic
Skills and competencies for digital process
transformation – a critical automation

analysis in the context of robotic

process automation
Dennis Schlegel Received 7 April 2021
Revised 15 July 2021
Faculty of Informatics, Reutlingen University, Reutlingen, Germany, and 17 July 2021
Accepted 17 July 2021
Patrick Kraus
Business School, Hochschule Pforzheim, Pforzheim, Germany

Abstract
Purpose – Digital transformation of organizations has major implications for required skills and competencies
of the workforce, both as a prerequisite for implementation, and, as a consequence of the transformation. The
purpose of this study is to analyze required skills and competencies for digital transformation using the context of
robotic process automation (RPA) as an example.
Design/methodology/approach – This study is based on an explorative, thematic coding analysis of
119 job advertisements related to RPA. The data was collected from major online job platforms, qualitatively
coded and subsequently analyzed quantitatively.
Findings – The research highlights the general importance of specific skills and competencies for digital
transformation and shows a gap between available skills and required skills. Moreover, it is concluded that
reskilling the existing workforce might be difficult. Many emerging positions can be found in the consulting
sector, which raises questions about the permanent vs temporary nature of the requirements, as well as the
difficulty of acquiring the required knowledge.
Originality/value – This paper contributes to knowledge by providing new empirical findings and a novel
perspective to the ongoing discussion of digital skills, employment effects and reskilling demands of the
existing workforce owing to recent technological developments and automation in the overall context of
digital transformation.
Keywords Knowledge, Workforce, Digital transformation, Digital skills, Digital divide, RPA
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
Digital transformation has initiated a radical change of societies and the business world
(George, 2020). Virtually all business sectors and corporate functions have been affected by
its disruptive nature (Matzler et al., 2018), and we can observe a profound change from
traditional business models to digital or hybrid ones. Moreover, we witnessed that Big Tech
companies such as Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook and so forth have obtained an unprecedented
influence and power. Digital transformation will continue to change organizations, processes
and technologies within a business firm context. Skills and competencies of employees can be
considered as a prerequisite for a successful digital transformation (Peter et al., 2020; Vial, 2019)
and the resistance of employees might be considered as a major barrier for the implementation
of digital technologies (Vial, 2019). Based on a comprehensive review of the literature, Nadkarni International Journal of
Organizational Analysis
and Prügl (2020) argue that the transformation of digital skills of employees has been largely © Emerald Publishing Limited
1934-8835
neglected by current research. DOI 10.1108/IJOA-04-2021-2707
IJOA Morakanyane et al. (2017) indicate that especially operational processes are affected by
digital transformation (Gimpel et al., 2018) and robotic process automation (RPA), as a key
technology with regard to administrative processes, plays a major role in these
developments (Anagnoste, 2017; Deloitte, 2018; Osmundsen et al., 2019; RolandBerger, 2018).
Given the above identified neglection of skills and competencies in research, this paper uses
RPA as a context to address this issue.
The overall research objective of this study is to analyze required skills and competencies
for digital transformation, using the context of RPA as an example. To address this
objective, a literature review as well as an empirical study using qualitative data from job
advertisements is conducted. This paper contributes to knowledge by providing empirical
findings and adding a novel perspective to the ongoing discussion of digital skills, employment
effects and reskilling demands of the existing workforce initiated by recent technological
developments with regard to RPA in the overall context of digital transformation.
The paper is structured as follows. The following literature review section discusses the
theoretical lens applied in this research and provides contextual background on the
phenomena of digital transformation and RPA. Moreover, the authors proceed with a
concise discussion of prior seminal work regarding required knowledge and competencies in
the context of digital transformation. Afterwards, the methodological approach of this
research is discussed. Finally, the authors present the results of the empirical study and
provide an in-depth discussion and reflection of the findings in the context of the literature.
The paper ends with a conclusion synthesizing the main findings and implications as well
as discussing limitations related to this research.

Literature review
Theoretical basis
Owing to the recent enormous technological change, it can be observed that firms experience
considerable pressure to adopt new digital technologies as well as to transform their
business models (Kohli and Melville, 2019; Kraus et al., 2019). The capability of a firm to
respond to these developments is crucial for long-term survival, and knowledge has been
identified as a key issue within this transformation (Lucas and Goh, 2009; Schneider, 2018;
Syed et al., 2020a, 2020b).
The role of knowledge, and also resources more generally, have been intensively
discussed by business and management scholars for decades (Barney, 1991; Bollinger and
Smith, 2001; Caputo et al., 2019; Ferreira et al., 2018; Grant, 1996, 1997; Kogut and Zander,
1992; Sveiby, 2001; Teece et al., 1997; Wernerfelt, 1995, 1984). It has been Penrose (2009), in
her seminal work on the growth of the firm, who exemplified the importance of skills and
knowledge of employees and clarifies that “the firm suffers a loss akin to a capital loss when
such employees leave the firm at the height of their abilities” (p. 22).
The importance of knowledge is also reflected in the theory of the knowledge-based view
(KBV) of the firm which can be considered as a core theoretical lens in management research
(Caputo et al., 2019; Ferreira et al., 2018; Kengatharan, 2019). KBV sees knowledge as a
central resource for value creation which is stimulated by the interaction between people
and the exchange of ideas, feedback and so forth (Sveiby, 2001). The discussion of Low and
Ho (2016) shows that value creation relies on such internal capabilities to create knowledge
but simultaneously also on the ability to manage external relationships with regard to
knowledge transfer. Some scholars argue that based on the resource-based view (RBV) of
the firm (Barney, 1991; Wernerfelt, 1984, 1995), KBV has been developed (Grant, 1996, 1997;
Kogut and Zander, 1992). However, the discussion of Eisenhardt and Santos (2006), for
instance, exemplifies that KBV can also be seen as an extension of organizational learning,
which would emphasize that KBV is not just a mere advancement of RBV. Apart from these Robotic
theoretical discussions, it indeed can be argued that knowledge is a strategic resource process
(Ferreira et al., 2018), and it is beyond doubt that the majority of scholars underline the
importance of knowledge and skills for the competitive situation of a firm (Bollinger and
automation
Smith, 2001; Caputo et al., 2019; Kogut and Zander, 1992; Spender and Grant, 1996) and
especially for digital transformation as indicated above.
Grant (1996) has done major conceptual groundwork developing a KBV as a theory of the
firm within the field of management studies. He synthetized the very core of knowledge
within a management context and identified the following characteristics of knowledge:

Transferability: concerns the transfer and sharing of knowledge, especially within
the firm but also between firms;

Capacity for aggregation: refers to the additivity of individual parts of knowledge
and hence also the capacity to absorb knowledge;

Appropriability: relates to the usage and application of knowledge and the return an
owner may receive owing to the value that is created by means of this resource;

Specialization in knowledge acquisition: deals with the efficiency in the knowledge
generation process and how a specialization in particular professional areas relates
to an efficient creation of knowledge; and

Knowledge creation of production: exemplifies the role of knowledge within the
production process and the transformation of input (critical is knowledge) to output.

The above characteristics provide a helpful understanding of knowledge, and it can be

argued that for all of these characteristics an increased importance can be observed owing to
massively accelerated developments in the context of digital transformation (He et al., 2020;
Nadkarni and Prügl, 2020; Reis et al., 2018). Concerning the various types of knowledge, it
can be distinguished between explicit knowledge (can be articulated and hence relatively
easily transferred) and tacit knowledge (manifested only in its application and hence not
easily accessible for transfer) (Grant, 1997). Bollinger and Smith (2001, p. 9) define knowledge
“as the understanding, awareness, or familiarity acquired through study, investigation,
observation, or experience over the course of time.” The discussion of Eisenhardt and Santos
(2006) again underlines the explicit nature of knowledge, as an unambiguous, reducible and
transferable construct as one type of knowledge and as a newer conceptualization a tacit type
of knowledge, which is related to the individual and can hardly be codified and transferred.
For us, KBV is a useful theoretical lens, which underlines the importance of knowledge in the
context of digital transformation. It can be argued that especially the tacit elements of
knowledge, which mainly base on experience and application and are accumulated over a
longer period of time, are relevant for digital transformation. We will take up the role of
knowledge and related concepts such as skills and competencies, in more detail later in the
course of this section.

Digital transformation
Digital transformation is probably one of the biggest challenges for traditional companies,
affecting all business functions, procedures, processes, operations, services and products
(Bouncken et al., 2019; Dehnert, 2020). According to Verhoef et al. (2021), digital
transformation comprises several aspects and facets, which can be illustrated as follows:

External drivers of digital transformation: digital technologies, digital competition
and digital customer behavior;
IJOA
Phases of digital transformation: digitization, digitalization and digital transformation;
and

Strategic imperatives of digital transformation: digital resources, organizational
structure, growth strategy, metrics and goals.

Digitization can be understood as some kind of technical process which is concerned with
converting analog signals to digital ones, whereas digitalization can be seen in the context of
applying digital techniques to a broader social and institutional surrounding in order to
develop the capabilities to use digital technologies (Kindermann et al., 2020; Tilson et al.,
2010). The impact and consequence of digital transformation is even more decisive.
According to Hanelt et al. (2020, p. 2), digital transformation can be defined “as organizational
change that is triggered and shaped by the widespread diffusion of digital technologies.”
Morakanyane et al. (2017, p. 437) define digital transformation as “an evolutionary process
that leverages digital capabilities and technologies to enable business models, operational
processes and customer experiences to create value.” There can be found various definitions in
the literature.
A survey study conducted by Peter et al. (2020) covering 1,854 Swiss firms identified
seven strategic action fields covering the areas of customers, infrastructure, technologies,
business models, marketing, processes and finally leadership and culture. It became evident
that digital transformation requires a fundamental change of organizations and will affect
almost all areas of a company, both internally and externally. Given the extent and the
complexity of digital transformation the ability to create, coordinate and harness knowledge
can be seen as an essential challenge for firms. At the very core of these changes are digital
technologies. In the literature, as well as, in the media more generally, various digital trends
and technologies are intensively discussed. Discussions include artificial intelligence (AI),
blockchain, cloud and mobile computing and also RPA, which seems to have an enormous
potential to automate a variety of administrative business processes and activities and
experiences an increased application in practice (Lacity and Willcocks, 2016), as will be
discussed in the following section.

Robotic process automation

RPA is a technology that has received a lot of attention in the corporate world in recent
years (Hofmann et al., 2020; Lacity and Willcocks, 2016). The term RPA as well as
accompanying graphical illustrations in publications by popular media and consulting firms
create the impression that RPA involves humanoid robots or other hardware-based robotics
technology. However, RPA is a software-based solution that performs tasks that have
previously been conducted by humans (Willcocks et al., 2015). Typically, RPA solutions are
used in processes where activities are performed across different user interfaces and systems
that are not integrated in the back-end and thus require manual steps. As Gartner (2018)
describes, RPA tools “mimic the manual path a human worker would take to complete a task,
using a combination of user interface interaction describer technologies.” Solutions can be
used both on individual desktops or operating on enterprise servers. In a similar vein, the
IEEE defines RPA as “A preconfigured software instance that uses business rules and
predefined activity choreography to complete the autonomous execution of a combination of
processes, activities, transactions, and tasks in one or more unrelated software systems to
deliver a result or service with human exception management” (IEEE, 2017).
Typical areas for the deployment of RPA are back offices of industries like financial
services (Lewicki et al., 2019; Marek et al., 2019), telecommunications (Lacity and Willcocks,
2016; Schmitz et al., 2019), or public accounting (Cooper et al., 2019). The reason is that the
companies in these industries have many repetitive administrative processes, thus, using Robotic
RPA provides large cost-saving potential. Processes which are standardized, routinized and process
have a high and predictable volume, among other criteria, are considered to be most
appropriate for the application of RPA (Osmundsen et al., 2019; Wellmann et al., 2020), hence
automation
the identification of suitable processes is pivotal for a successful application (Bourgouin
et al., 2018). Van der Aalst et al. (2018) also state that the main motivation of companies
using RPA is achieving a high return on investment by way of increased efficiency of
administrative operational processes and hence reduced costs (Ng et al., 2021; Rizk et al.,
2020; Syed et al., 2020a, 2020b).
For instance, recent practitioner studies indicate for the finance function that RPA tend to
be a widely applied digital technology, experiencing a more intensive practical application
compared to data analytics, AI or blockchain (Horvath&Partners, 2021). A study conducted
by PwC (2020) among 141 firms in the region of Germany, Austria and Switzerland indicates
that 54% already use RPA, and RPA seems to remain an important technology in the context
of digital transformation more generally in the next years (Gartner, 2021). Knowledge deficits
seem to be a major burden of a RPA implementation, especially in smaller firm contexts (PwC,
2020). However, compared to other digital technologies, RPA seems to be more easily
implementable and directly resulting in efficiency gains and reduced costs as recent case
studies indicate (Lacity and Willcocks, 2016; Schmitz et al., 2019), and indeed other studies also
indicate positive effects on economic performance indicators (Deloitte, 2018; Osmundsen et al.,
2019). This makes RPA an interesting and important phenomenon within the field of digital
transformation, which needs more intense scrutiny by scholars.

Impact of digital transformation on workforce

Digital transformation in general, and automation technologies like RPA in particular, have
a large impact on organizations’ workforce. For instance, Stokes and Oiry (2012) highlight the
importance and facets of competencies in the context of the workplace. The recent developments
exert pressure on firms to develop their employees’ skills and competencies from two directions.
First, because of automation, activities that humans perform today are substituted by
machines and algorithms. History shows that the unemployment rate has not increased in
the long run despite automation and technological progress (Autor, 2015). However,
automation does create large shifts between sectors and job profiles, as shown by means of
historical data by McKinseyGlobalInstitute (2017). In the current wave of automation driven
by technologies such as AI and RPA, not only assembly and factory workers will be affected
by the technological possibilities but also professionals working as bookkeeping and payroll
clerks, data entry clerks or accountants (Cooper et al., 2019; WEF, 2018). On the other hand,
new roles are emerging such as data analysts and scientists, AI and machine learning
specialists, information technology (IT) services and process automation specialists. Overall,
experts estimate that the effects of emerging roles will offset the lower demand for other
roles (WEF, 2018). While on the macro-economic level the overall employment effect of
automation might be neglectable, the situation on the level of individual employees is more
complex as the new roles require a different set of skills and dedicated training. As both the
McKinseyGlobalInstitute (2017) and the WEF (2018) state, a large proportion of the global
workforce will need to transition to new occupations, and thus, require significant reskilling.
While it is often claimed that RPA will not lead to lay-offs, empirical investigations indicate
that there will be effects on organizations’ headcount – either directly owing to lay-offs or at
least indirectly owing to reduced hiring (Cooper et al., 2019; Eikebrokk and Olsen, 2019).
Second, organizations require adequate intellectual capital to survive the digital
disruption but also to implement the digital transformation (Erceg and Zoranovic, 2020).
IJOA The difficulty is that the newly skilled workforce is needed before the digital transformation
can actually be initiated, as many firms report significant deficiencies in their employees’
current digital competencies (Hoberg et al., 2015, 2017). To identify the skill gaps that need
to be filled, organizations have to analyze the skills available today and compare them to the
ones that are required in the future (Kohnke, 2017). Being confronted with a skill gap, firms
can either invest in training their existing employees or recruit new personnel. With respect
to training, a training strategy with a broad range of curricula should be developed based on
the identified skill gaps (Kohnke, 2017). Another successfully tested approach to qualify the
workforce is to leverage internally available know-how of “digital champions” by having
them formally or informally facilitate skill transfer (Welch and McAfee, 2013). On the other
hand, recruitment plays a central role for digital transformation (Gilch and Sieweke, 2021).
As internal skill development takes a lot of time and success is uncertain (Hoberg et al., 2015,
2017), hiring external talent might be compelling for many organizations. However, digital
talent is scarce and experience shows that finding the required profiles externally is difficult,
when these skills do not already exist within an organization (Welch and McAfee, 2013).

Required skills and competencies for digital transformation

Owing to these challenges, it is crucial for companies to have a clear understanding of
required skills of the future to invest their scarce resources appropriately. Before previous
studies regarding this question are discussed, some conceptual and terminological issues
must be clarified. In general, it can be noted that there is no uniform definition of terms such
as skills and competencies. A skill is often seen as a capability of a person that can be
learned, while the term “competencies” often relates to personal attributes (Peter et al., 2019).
According to Teece et al. (1997), competencies typically encompass the assembly of firm-
specific assets so that they facilitate unique activities, such as organizational routines and
processes. Digital technologies may likely be an important element to strengthen existing
competencies in this sense, as well as to develop innovative new ones. Additionally, Ledford
(1995, p. 56) usefully defines competencies as “demonstrable characteristics of the person,
including knowledge, skills, and behaviours, that enable performance.” A competency hence
includes knowledge and skills which have been already previously conceptualized. However,
this paper does not aim to contribute to the terminological debate on the differences between
these concepts. Therefore, the wording “skills and competencies” is used within this paper
which is meant to comprise various related concepts. For us knowledge in its various forms
(e.g. explicit and tacit) is a key element of our “skills and competencies” understanding.
A number of previous studies have discussed digital skills and competencies for the
digitalized world. In recent years, many studies have emphasized the importance of non-
technical skills and competencies. For instance, Faina and Almeida (2020) identify key
competencies for digital transformation based on a Delphi study with six human resources
experts, concluding that skills such as adaptability, creativity, resilience and innovation
ability are crucial for digital transformation. Van Laar et al. (2018) highlight the importance
of skills related to information, communication, collaboration, critical-thinking, creativity
and problem-solving. Imran et al. (2020) focus on leadership competencies for digital
transformation in their research. Other studies deal with technical skills, encompassing both,
technological skills and management skills. Regarding technological skills, technologies such
as AI, robotization, Internet of Things, augmented reality and cloud computing are pointed
out (Andriole, 2018; Sousa and Rocha, 2019). In terms of management skills, several topics
such as agile project management, vendor management and performance metrics are
mentioned (Andriole, 2018). While these previous studies provide important findings about
the general type of skills and competencies that are required for digital transformation, a
number of research gaps remain. First, some of the studies’ results may not be applicable to Robotic
the specific context of workforce transformation, as they are discussed in a general context, process
e.g. “21st century skills.” There is also a lack of details regarding specific technological skills
that are required. For instance, “artificial intelligence” is a very broad term which includes
automation
various techniques and methods such as statistics or machine learning (Ashri, 2020). In a
similar vein, the term “robotics” can refer to completely different technologies, ranging from
software for back office automation to hardware in manufacturing plants. To evaluate skill
gaps and reskilling requirements, a deeper level of analysis will be necessary which takes into
account actual skills as opposed to generic technological buzzwords. Additionally, some of the
studies lack empirical foundation and the methodology behind the skills mentioned remains
unclear. Finally, a comparison of the existing reskilling recommendations from the literature
with empirical data on reskilling and recruiting measures by firms is missing to date.
Therefore, it is unknown whether there is a theory–practice gap between what the academic
frameworks suggest and the organizations’ actual behavior.
Other prior studies from the information systems discipline also rely on a content
analysis of job postings as well to derive required skills for specific professions, such as IT
architects (Gellweiler, 2020) or data analysts (Debortoli et al., 2014; Dong and Triche, 2020).
While these studies provide interesting results regarding specialist IT-related professions,
their conceptual contribution to foster our understanding workforce-related effects of digital
transformation is limited.

Design of the study

The authors conducted an analysis of secondary empirical data (online job advertisements)
by means of an exploratory thematic coding approach (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Making use
of secondary empirical data is common in business research (Blumberg et al., 2011) and
allows a standardized collection of data. Also collecting data from job advertisements is an
established method and has been used in previous studies (Choi and Rasmussen, 2009;
Debortoli et al., 2014; Dong and Triche, 2020; Gallivan et al., 2004; Todd et al., 1995). The
major advantage of this method is the forward-looking nature as job advertisement reflects
companies’ predictions about what skills will be important in the future. Other advantages
of the method over other methods such as interviews or surveys is the public availability of
the data, but also that data collection is not affected by socially desired answering biases, as
potentially possible in interview studies (Kvale and Brinkmann, 2009). To ensure credibility
of this research, the authors applied different mechanisms of reflexivity (Stokes, 2011;
Stokes and Wall, 2014), such as procedures that both authors critically scrutinized, in a
constant manner, the data collection and analysis approach by means of critical reflection
and discussion.
Data was collected from the German website of the two major online job platforms
Stepstone (www.stepstone.de) and Indeed (http://de.indeed.com) on a specific date in
September 2018. Based on a few exploratory search tests, it was decided that all postings
that contain the exact term “Robotic Process Automation” are included in a first step. In a
second step, the records that met the following exclusion criteria were deleted: job
advertisements for internships or student positions, job advertisements that were not
written in German and redundant job advertisements. Moreover, search results that
contained the term “Robotic Process Automation” in the advertisement but did not have a
focus on RPA-related tasks were excluded manually, e.g. non-related positions in RPA
software firms.
The study initially applied a qualitative coding technique (Grbich, 2013; Saldaña, 2013)
on the sample job advertisements and afterwards analyzed the findings quantitatively.
IJOA To derive the codes and categories, a combination of a deductive and inductive approach
was used. On the one hand, certain codes were derived from theoretical considerations. For
example, the most popular RPA software tools in the market were included as codes, as well
as common academic disciplines as study backgrounds. On the other hand, codes were
collected inductively from the data to reflect the specific requirements formulated in the job
advertisements. Subsequently, the data records were coded in a semi-automated process
with the help of spreadsheet functionalities. To assure proper data quality, the coding
results were critically reviewed. After the coding was completed, the data was analyzed with
the help of a standard statistical software, mostly using descriptive statistics. Additionally,
simple tests of association (Pearson’ correlation, chi-squared) were used, however, only very
selectively owing to the rather qualitative focus and sample size restrictions of this study.
The final sample consists of 119 job advertisements. Based on the qualitative paradigm
and the concept of data saturation (Corbin and Strauss, 2015), the sample size was
considered to be adequate, as no new concepts emerged from the data anymore after having
analyzed a certain amount of job advertisements. The sample contains advertisements from
different industries with the majority from consulting and auditing firms (54.6%). Although
it is acknowledged that the sample might not be representative in general, the over-
proportional demand for RPA professional in the consulting sector seems plausible as many
companies are implementing RPA-based processes with the help of external consultancies.
Also, the large demand in the IT sector that might be related to the introduction of the tools
is plausible. The strong representation of the financial services sector is consistent with the
results of prior research (Willcocks et al., 2015) in terms of relevant industries for
deployment of RPA (Table 1).

Results
Qualification
RPA involves both business and IT-related activities. Therefore, it is not surprising that
companies are looking for graduates from different academic disciplines as shown in the
Table 2 below. Interestingly, it can also be observed that most job advertisements mention
several suitable disciplines, i.e. for the companies, it seems to be more important that the
candidates have a degree at all than having it in a particular discipline. The most popular
qualification, however, is an IT-related background which is mentioned in 71.4% of the job
advertisements, followed by a business or economic degree (63.9%). Some of the companies
(7.6%) do not specify the educational background and focus on required skills instead.

Industries Counts % of total

Consulting and auditing 65 54.6

Information technology 13 10.9
Financial services 13 10.9
Transportation and logistics 8 6.7
Automotive 4 3.4
Diversified 4 3.4
Energy 3 2.5
Chemicals 2 1.7
Retail 2 1.7
Electronics 2 1.7
Table 1. Machinery 1 0.8
Industries in sample Not specified 2 1.7
Few companies are also satisfied with vocational training in informatics instead of academic Robotic
studies (not in table). process
automation
Programming skills
The data show that many positions require programming skills. A total of 52 companies
(43.7%) request programming skills – general programming abilities or a specific
programming language (31.9%). Table 3 shows specific programming languages that are
mentioned in job advertisements. The most popular languages are Visual Basic, C/Cþþ,
JavaScript and Python (Table 3).

Software knowledge
Apart from programming expertise, many companies (65.6%) require expertise in particular
software, including RPA software, and other software. In terms of RPA software, 43
companies request skills in one or more particular tools. Among these tools, Blue Prism is
the most mentioned tool (28.6% of companies), followed by UiPath (25.2%) and automation
anywhere (18.5%).
The data show that many of the 43 companies in the sample mention more than one tool.
Although in many companies only one type of RPA software might be in operation, the
results are plausible owing to the high number of consulting companies in the sample. The
reason is that consulting companies do not use the candidates for internal purposes, but for
projects at different clients where also different RPA tools might be used. Indeed, a cross-
tabulation and chi-squared test (p < 0.1) shows that consulting firms are more likely to
mention several tools than only one tool, if they request specific tools at all (Table 4).
Concerning other software, 26.9% of the companies in the sample require their
candidates to have skills in one or more Microsoft Office software, in SAP ERP (19.3%), or
other particular software (10.1%) such as Tableau, PowerBI or Qlik.

Disciplines Counts % of total

Computer sciences, informatics, business informatics 85 71.4

Business, economics 76 63.9
Mathematics, natural sciences 38 31.9
Engineering, industrial engineering 32 26.9
Other 6 5.0 Table 2.
Not specified 9 7.6 Academic disciplines

Languages Counts % of total

Visual Basic 17 14.3

C/Cþþ 14 11.8
JavaScript 14 11.8
Python 14 11.8
Java 10 8.4
HTML, CSS 9 7.6 Table 3.
R 7 5.9 Programming
Not specified 81 68.1 languages
IJOA Other information technology-related skills
Additionally, the companies in the sample require other IT-related skills as shown in the
table below. A total of 28 companies (23.5%) have required expertise in AI, machine learning
and related concepts. Second, database know-how was mentioned by approximately 20% of
the companies which includes both general experiences with databases and specific
database types and languages such as SQL, Hadoop or MongoDB. Moreover, many
companies look for candidates with experience in the Microsoft .NET technology, as well as
expertise in (Advanced) Analytics (Table 5).

Business and sectoral expertise

Besides the technical IT skills, many companies are also looking for employees with
expertise in the business field to deal with RPA. The most important aspect is expertise in
business process management as mentioned by 50 companies (42.0%). Moreover, functional
expertise in finance and accounting is important which might be an indication that most
RPA projects are currently conducted in the finance and accounting function. But also, other
functional areas such as purchasing or human resources are mentioned by some companies
(13.4%) (Table 6).
Some companies also prefer candidates with competencies related to a certain industry.
Above all, specialized knowledge concerning the financial services sector is sought after by
34 companies. While 6 out of 13 companies from the financial services sector would like their
candidates to have sectoral know-how, also 22 out of 65 consulting companies and 4 out of 9
IT companies have this preference. Overall, this is a strong indication that many RPA
projects are currently conducted in the banking and insurance sector.

No. of RPA tools Non-consulting firms (Counts) Consulting firms (Counts)

None 33 43
Table 4. One 10 4
RPA Software Several 11 18

Other IT skills Counts % of total

Artificial intelligence, machine learning 28 23.5

Databases (General expertise, SQL, Hadoop, etc.) 24 20.2
Table 5. Microsoft .NET 19 16.0
Other IT skills Analytics, Data Mining, Text Mining 10 8.4

Business and sectoral expertise Counts % of total

Expertise in business process management 50 42.0

Functional expertise in finance and accounting 36 30.3
Table 6. Functional expertise in other areas (e.g. purchasing, human resources) 16 13.4
Business and sectoral Industry expertise in financial services (e.g. banking, insurance) 34 28.6
expertise Industry expertise in other industries (e.g. automotive, retail) 10 8.4
Other requirements and competencies Robotic
While many companies do not explicitly demand professional experience, one-third of the process
position requires several years of experience whereas candidates need leadership experience
or competencies for only 14 positions (11.8%). Expertise in traditional or agile project
automation
management methods is beneficial for 28 of the positions (23.5%). As also indicated by Lois
et al. (2020), especially in the digital era, employees’ skills and training can be seen as
significant for the successful implementation and use of tools, while others indicate what the
results of non-effective training and development approaches could be (Rowland et al., 2017).
The companies also have requirements toward their candidates in terms of soft skills:
more than half of the position requires strong communication skills (56.3%), as well as team-
orientation and capability to work in a team (53.8%). Finally, mobility and willingness to
travel are necessary for almost half of the positions (49.6%). Both, a chi-squared test (p <
0.001) and the Pearson correlation, reveal that this effect is again because of a high number
of consulting positions in the sample. Moreover, the stronger focus on soft skills by the
consulting firms can also be statistically shown for flexibility and adaptability, whereas self-
reliance seems to be less important for consultants that often work under strong guidance
and supervision in their early career (Table 7).

Discussion
The overall findings of this research highlight the importance of skills and competencies in
the realm of digital transformation and, as indicated by Nadkarni and Prügl (2020), these
have only been addressed marginally in current research, while there indeed seems to be
observable an increased interest in the phenomena related to digital skills and competencies.
Given the impact and pace of change owing to the developments in the context of digital
transformation, it can be argued that the development and management of digital skills and
competencies of employees should be a key priority for companies and likewise for scholarly
research.
While, in tendency, the literature applies a rather holistic view when addressing required
digital knowledge (Faina and Almeida, 2020; Sousa and Rocha, 2019), this research, in the
specific context of RPA, provides a more in-depth and detailed view on the necessary skills
and competencies of employees in this domain. Given the heterogeneity and variety of
digital technologies (e.g. AI vs. cloud computing vs. RPA), it can be assumed that a
considerably different set of competencies is required to be able to cope with the challenges
imposed on the firm by these technologies. Thus, openness toward change, creativity,
communication skills and so forth (Faina and Almeida, 2020; van Laar et al., 2018) will
remain key competencies in all spheres of digital transformation. This can also be confirmed
by this research, as competencies like communication skills, team orientation but also more
generally work experience and leadership skills are frequently referred to in the job
advertisements. Moreover, the present research sheds light on a number of specific
competencies required in the fields of programming languages (e.g. Visual Basic, C/Cþþ,
Java, Python) and experience in specific RPA software (such as Blue Prism, UiPath).

Consulting industry
Pearson’s r p-value
Table 7.
Mobility, willingness to travel 0.431 <0.001 Correlation between
Flexibility, ability to adapt 0.259 0.004 soft skills and
Self-reliance 0.330 <0.001 consulting industry
IJOA Hence, the present study confirms the general direction of prior studies but provides more
detailed results on specific skills and competencies for future employment in the field of
RPA, which indeed is a key contribution of this research. From a KBV perspective, the
identified need of specific competencies can be seen in the light of knowledge aggregation
and accumulation on the one side. On the other side, the empirical findings indicate that
firms do currently not seem to possess the appropriate level of knowledge in the context of
RPA to implement and develop the technology further (Grant, 1996).
While automation and robotics have been intensively discussed in the context of shop
floor and blue-collar settings, it is a relatively new phenomenon that administrative and
back-office activities, and hence typical white-collar settings, face an increasing pressure of
automation by means of the specific functionalities of RPA. Based on both the industries in
the sample and the skills mentioned in the job advertisement, it can be said that the financial
services sector and the finance and accounting function seem to be most severely affected by
the changes. This does not only mean that skills in this area are relevant for prospective
RPA experts but also that people working in these areas today might be predominately
affected by automation and reskilling requirements. This is in line with prior research that,
in general, sees a huge impact of digital transformation on the finance function (Greulich
and Riepolt, 2018; Langmann, 2019; Nuhn et al., 2018).
Given the results of our empirical study, we can observe a severe need for skills and
competencies with regard to the implementation and development of RPA. After having
analyzed the collected job advertisements, it can be assumed that current competencies, which
mainly have a strong content-related form, when, for instance, looking at an accounting clerk
or a payroll administrator, are insufficient. Hence, RPA and other automation technologies
imply a major reskilling demand for the existing workforce in many organizations. However,
considering the novel results of this research, the general idea and argument in many
discussions, that individual employees that are affected by automation can be retrained to a
position in which they supervise and operate “robots” has to be seen extremely critical. It is
acknowledged that a certain percentage of the existing workforce might engage in tasks such
as exception handling in an RPA ecosystem. However, most of the jobs identified in this study
are in the consulting sector and thus related to the implementation of RPA, including both
business analysis and technical implementation. A person that has been working as an
accounting clerk for most of their lifetime will hardly be able to master the challenges of
learning programming languages.
Grant (1997) has distinguished between explicit and tacit knowledge and tacit knowledge
very much relies on experience, intuitive knowledge and so forth and is only hardly
transferable, as such knowledge is typically obtained in various different projects. Given,
the complexity of digital transformation projects, also in the context of RPA, it is not
surprising that besides a focus on IT skills and competencies, also skills and competencies
in various sectors and functional areas as well as in business process management is
required and many of the competencies in this context have to be considered as rather tacit
ones. An explanation for this might be that in such a complex and changing environment
the aggregation of knowledge and specialization in knowledge acquisition (Grant, 1996) is a
time-intensive task.
With 55% of job advertisements in the sample, the consulting sector seems to offer most
job opportunities within the field of RPA. This is not surprising because consulting firms
often drive the adoption of new technologies in different industries. The predominance of
consulting-related job advertisements can also be seen as another indication of the tacit
nature of knowledge required for digital transformation. As opposed to other companies
where digital transformation projects are one-time endeavors, consulting firms are able to
acquire skills and competencies and continuously train employees in many consecutive Robotic
transformation projects at different client companies. Especially, with regard to the process
implementation of RPA software bots, one can even critically pose the question whether and
how long specific competencies in this context are required internally in a company and
automation
whether a set of different competencies is required for the operational side of RPA. The
ability to make us of external sources of knowledge and relationships with regard to digital
transformation might hence be important issue for the vast majority of firms (Low and Ho,
2016). Questions related to this and important for further research might be:

Can digital transformation related projects be seen as primarily temporary projects
and after implementation certain skills and competencies are no longer required?

Does digital transformation in general lead to more outsourcing when considering the
diversity of various digital technologies and the specific knowledge related to these?

In terms of overall employment effects, this also raises the question of whether the jobs will
be permanent or only be limited for the period of the main wave of the introduction of RPA.
Finally, the results of this study emphasize the interdisciplinary nature of RPA,
spanning, for example, accounting and IT. This might also lead to a further hybridization of
employees’ roles, which has already been observed in the context of enterprise resource
planning systems (Lois et al., 2020).

Conclusion and outlook

This paper has investigated required skills and competencies for digital transformation,
collecting new empirical data in the context of RPA. Our research has highlighted the
general importance of specific skills and competencies for digital transformation, and, based
on the theoretical foundation of the knowledge-based view of the firm, revealed the tacit
nature of such knowledge. Given the deviation between typically existing skills in jobs that
are likely to be replaced, and required skills for new tasks, our results put into question
whether reskilling the existing workforce is possible. This research has also shown that
many new jobs are advertised in the consulting sector which might be an indication of both,
the difficulty for firms to have specialist know-how available in-house, and, a rather
temporary nature of the skills and competencies requirements and related jobs. Taken
together, our findings make an important contribution to the narrow body of literature on
skills and competencies for digital transformation.
Our findings have important implications for business organizations, academia and
society. First of all, they show that continuous and lifelong learning, as well as openness
toward changing circumstances will become even more important in the future, both for
individuals and organizations. This will also have a tremendous impact on educational
systems and provide new opportunities for universities to offer, for example, part-time
postgraduate programs as well as non-degree programs for employee development. Future
curricula should also reflect the interdisciplinarity of future required skills, for example, by
integrating elements of computer science discipline into business-related study programs
and vice versa. Furthermore, our research suggests that business firms, as well as society as
a whole should be aware of a potential knowledge gap and develop concepts to deploy
employees that are affected by automation in different contexts. Finally, as pointed out in
the discussion section, our research has brought up new questions about the nature of
digital transformation and the necessity of outsourcing more tasks in the future, which
constitute important areas for further research.
As every research, however, also this research has its limitations. First of all, this study is
limited to RPA as one particular area of automation. That means that the findings might not
IJOA be completely transferrable to the general discussion of the effects of automation, although
the authors believe that most arguments might be transferrable by means of logical reasoning.
Second, the sample provides a snapshot on the labor market at a specific point in time in
Germany, i.e. the results might not be generalizable beyond the temporal and geographical
scope. Further sampling bias might arise from the selection of job platforms. Hence,
comparative research approaches in different countries or regarding related technologies such
as AI to corroborate the findings would further increase our understanding on the phenomena
under study. Furthermore, a longitudinal research design to identify further trends could be a
promising avenue for further research, especially concerning the finding that the jobs seem to
be largely consulting-driven, and the related question whether the nature of the career
opportunities tends rather temporary or permanent. Additionally, the collection of new
primary data about the phenomena discussed in this paper, irrespective of underlying
paradigms and concrete data collection methods, could considerably increase the knowledge
in the field. It is beyond dispute that more research is needed, as the technological progress
will continue to take place.

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Corresponding author
Dennis Schlegel can be contacted at: dennis.schlegel@reutlingen-university.de

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