Digitization in the 4IR Era: The New Strategic Diver of State-Owned Enterprises' Operational Efficiency

Getting state-owned enterprises to perform at optimum level and achieve the best for the country is the dream of every government. Unfortunately, even if digitization is one of the indisputable strategies for achieving such a vision, little has been done in most of the previous epistemological studies to discern how digitization would leverage the state-owned enterprises’ operational efficiency. Instead, a lot of studies have been more fascinated with the analysis of the management and performance of state-owned enterprises, as well as factors like mismanagement, financial mismanagement, and political interference that affect the effective performance of most state-owned enterprises in South Africa. In contrast, this study takes a different approach. Given the operational management problems and cost control issues that most state-owned enterprises experience in South Africa, it is such a question that this study sought to explore and solve if digitization can improve operational efficiency to lower costs and bolster the profitability and financial sustainability of state-owned enterprises. To achieve that, the study used a systematic review structured according to four steps encompassing the formulation of a systematic review question, literature search, data extraction and thematic analysis. As the world digitizes, findings indicated most state-owned enterprises to also embrace the use of the required 4IR digital technologies and infrastructure. But in that process of digitization, some of the state-owned enterprises were also found to experience impediments arising from unclear digital strategy, poor digital operations management, budgetary constraints and resistance to organisational change. Given such dynamics, it suggested that it is important that state-owned enterprises consider addressing such problems by introducing the appropriate digital strategy accompanied with the use of the appropriate change management and transformational leadership style.