Resumo

The 21st century has arrived bringing with it an unprecedented technological evolution in the history of mankind. The digitalization provided by the scientific advances of Telematics with the support of the World Wide Web - Internet, have had a marked influence on society and the various sectors of the world economy through the establishment of new paradigms that are converting modern civilization.This article proposes to discuss the gap related to the competencies and skills needed by administrators in the development of business relationships (Jiang et al., 2020) in the modern industrial .

In this sense, the article intends to answer the following research question: What is the influence that digital technologies have on business relationships? The following objectives were defined: (1) identify and estimate the intensity of the digital technologies used by the companies studied; (2) identify and measure the intensity of the relationships of these companies with their business network, and (3) Relate the two variables to understand the phenomenon.

Industrial relations in general have two main paradigms: transactional (Williamson, 2008) and relational (Dyer & Singh, 1998; Dyer et al., 2018). In this sense, some authors understand that in environments where digital technologies are used, the transactional, or merely economic, approach is replaced by the relational approach with greater social influence, provided that both companies accumulate benefits (Grandinetti et al., 2020).

The research had an exploratory character and adopted a quantitative approach in a sample of 18 companies in the Brazilian automation and robotics segment, 15 from the Southeast region and 3 from the South region. Two companies (G and L) that did not fully comply with the research protocol were discarded. The exploratory nature of this investigation seeks new evidence in the context of the subject and is in line with Piccarozzi's (2018) thinking that empirical research on industry 4.0 has outnumbered conceptual and theoretical articles, which may indicate a new phase of scientific discoveries.

It was found that there is a complementarity between social and economic ties: in the initial acquisitions of digital technologies by companies, economic ties are more valued; after the acquisitions are carried out, social bonds become preponderant in the business relationship, and so on.

Considering the business network, companies in the automation and robotics segment have intensive relationships with both customers and suppliers. It is also noted that digital technologies, typical of I4.0, can exert a significant influence on the business relationships of a business network. As a relevant finding, the existence of complementarity between social and economic links may indicate that the technology is being implemented successively in stages.

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