Variegated digitalisation? Comparing digital trajectories in two I4.0 manufactures in Northern Italy

The debate on digitisation and changes in manufacturing has focused on the digital twin/digital shadow, two trajectories of technology implementation with different implications for work processes. At the same time, many studies suggest that digitalisation in practice is implemented in different ways on the base of the characteristics of the context, nurturing the varieties of digital capitalism theoretical perspective. This paper explores empirically the digital trajectories implemented by two German owned manufacture plants in Northern Italy. Both companies, leaders in their respective fields (sports cars and high-tech room air conditioners), are inspired by lean principles and adhere to the I4.0 paradigm, to which the literature refers the digital twin trajectory, but the two companies are characterised by different contexts. The results suggest that in both cases, despite adherence to the I4.0 paradigm, there is a predominance of the digital shadow trajectory, but the underlying reasons for this predominance differ. On a theoretical level, while the study confirms the usefulness of the varieties of digital capitalism perspective, it also suggests the opportunity to complement it with the concept of variegated digitalisation, a more appropriate concept to understand the multiscalar dimension and the polymorphic and dynamic character of contexts.