The industrial intelligence manifested by replacing labor with machines is an important means for manufacturing enterprises to improve quality and efficiency. However, it also brings undeniable social consequences, such as layoffs and labor disputes. Under such pressure, whether enterprises are able to continue promoting industrial intelligence has become a central research topic. From the perspective of corporate social responsibility and through the configurational analysis of 101 manufacturing enterprises, it is found that six factors, including government subsidies, profitability, customer type, enterprise type, enterprise age and competition intensity, interact with each other to form paths to expand the use of machines, namely: goverment subsidy-driven paths, competition-driven paths, and profit-driven paths. At the same time, it also identified paths where firms reduces the use of machines, including efficiency-loss path, legitimacy-loss path, dual-loss path, and legitimacy-protection path. These findings not only unravel the heterogeneous impacts of different stakeholders (such as governments, managers, customers, etc.) on enterprises, but also provide strategic guidance and decision-making framework for enterprises to continue the automation process and to find a balance between operational efficiency and social responsibility when facing labor disputes.