Staying relevant for industry 4.0: Examining the effects of adaptability, digital fluency, global perspective, learning agility, and self-management on job performance in Oman's public sector

Abstract

The rapid adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies is transforming workforce skill requirements, yet empirical evidence on Staying Relevant competencies and their direct effects on job performance remains limited, particularly in public-sector and developing-economy contexts. This study investigates how five Industry 4.0 Staying Relevant competencies, adaptability, digital fluency, global perspective, learning agility, and self-management influence job performance among employees in Oman's public sector. Guided by Socio-Technical Systems Theory and Human Capital Development Theory, a quantitative cross-sectional design was employed using survey data collected from employees across Omani ministries and government agencies (n = 130). The measurement and structural models were analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with 10,000 bootstrapping resamples. The results reveal a differentiated pattern of findings: Digital Fluency emerged as the strongest and most statistically significant positive predictor of job performance, followed by Self-Management and Learning Agility, both of which also demonstrated significant positive effects. In contrast, Adaptability and Global Perspective did not produce significant direct effects within the multivariate model. These findings suggest that in a digitally transforming public sector, job performance is most directly enhanced by employees' digital capability, self-regulatory ability, and capacity for self-directed learning, while broader readiness-oriented competencies may require stronger socio-technical alignment and enabling organizational conditions to translate into measurable performance outcomes. This study contributes to the emerging Industry 4.0 workforce literature by providing context-specific empirical evidence from a non-Western public-sector setting and demonstrating that competency–performance relationships are not uniform across all dimensions of workforce readiness. The findings offer practical implications for public sector training design, capability development strategies, and workforce policies aligned with Oman's Vision 2040 modernization agenda. Keywords: Industry 4.0; public sector; job performance; adaptability; digital fluency; global perspective; learning agility; self-management; PLS-SEM; socio-technical systems; human capital development, Oman Vision 2040