Digitalisation Practices in South-African State-Owned Enterprises: A Framework for Rapid Adoption of Digital Solutions

The dawn of the 4IR (4th Industrial Revolution) brought about numerous opportunities for digitisation of South African State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs). Yet, it is uncertain to what extent these SOEs are positioned to embrace 4IR opportunities and address the challenges. In this paper we investigate the value of SOEs in South Africa (SA) as a developing economy as well as important components of the 4IR and SA government initiatives to embrace the 4IR. Amongst others, Blockchain, Advanced Analytics, AI, and the IoT have been identified as important 4IR components. On the strength of a literature review, a number of propositions is defined and these together with existing technology adoption frameworks, notably the Technology-Organisation-Environment (TOE) framework are used to define a digitalisation framework for 4IR adoption by SA SOEs. Key to the framework is collaboration among individuals in the 4IR. The framework is subsequently validated conceptually by linking it to the stated propositions.