Received: 2024-03-05  |  Accepted: 2024-06-06  |  Published: 2024-06-30

Title

Fourth industrial revolution and social innovation dynamics in South Africa: a review


Abstract

Social innovation is one of the key drivers of the sustainable development agenda of the Republic of South Africa in the wake of the new global focus on sustainable development. Furthermore, it is within the agenda of sustainable development that community development, poverty alleviation and eradication and the improvement of the living standards of all South Africans can be realised in the current era of connectivity, advanced analytics, automation, and advanced-manufacturing technology that has been transforming global business for years. Through the extensive review of purposively selected written documents such as journal articles, books, book chapters and newspapers, the paper discusses the role that social innovation plays in pursuing and attaining sustainable development in and by South Africa within the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). Succinctly, the focus of this manuscript is to analyse the role that social innovation in a 4IR context can be the conduit for improving how the government intensifies social and community development. The article indicated that lack of critical skills, scarcity of resources, poor accountability, poor organisational culture, lack of integrity, and low equity and inclusion, among others, were identified as the challenges to social innovation in South Africa. To this effect, the paper showed that the Fourth Industrial Revolution in South Africa can be used to drive social innovation and address urgent socioeconomic issues. It can also promote inclusive growth and build a more sustainable and equitable future for all South Africans.


Keywords

Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), social innovation, sustainable development, South Africa, poverty


JEL classifications

H83 , O31 , O35


URI

http://jssidoi.org/ird/article/164


DOI


Pages

103-116


Funding


This is an open access issue and all published articles are licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Authors

Haurovi, Maxwell
University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa https://www.uj.ac.za
Articles by this author in: CrossRef |  Google Scholar

Chilunjika, Alouis
University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa https://www.uj.ac.za
Articles by this author in: CrossRef |  Google Scholar

Journal title

Insights into Regional Development

Volume

6


Number

2


Issue date

June 2024


Issue DOI


ISSN

ISSN 2345-0282 (online)


Publisher

VšĮ Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Center, Vilnius, Lithuania

Cited

Google Scholar

Article views & downloads

HTML views: 1635  |  PDF downloads: 1006

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