Jul 2026· Digital Social Sciences· Vol 3, pp. 13-23· 0 citations· 31 references
TL;DR
This study traces the conceptual roots of DSI in the broader social innovation literature and in information-systems research on digital innovation, and reviews the major theoretical frameworks, including a nascent multidimensional framework spanning digital technology, innovation process, and sustainability focus to connect digital innovation to sustainable development.
Abstract
Digital social innovation (DSI), the use of digital technologies by citizens, civil society organizations, social enterprises, and public institutions to develop novel solutions to social and environmental problems, has evolved over the past decade and a half as a distinct field of research and practice at the intersection of technology studies, innovation studies, and sustainability science. Current study explores the interdisciplinary literature on DSI and its relationship to sustainability, in its triple-bottom-line sense of environmental, social, and economic dimensions. It traces the conceptual roots of DSI in the broader social innovation literature and in information-systems research on digital innovation, reviews the major theoretical frameworks, including a nascent multidimensional framework spanning digital technology, innovation process, and sustainability focus to connect digital innovation to sustainable development, and examines empirical evidence on how digitally enabled initiatives, from open data commons and citizen science to platform cooperatives, civic technology, telemedicine, and precision agriculture, contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The research engages critically with the limits of DSI's contribution, including the digital divide, the environmental footprint of digital infrastructure itself, the phenomenon of data colonialism, and the tendency toward technological solutionism, before setting out a twelve-pathway research agenda and highlights practical implications for practitioners, policymakers, and researchers. DSI offers a genuine, if bounded and unevenly distributed, set of tools for advancing sustainability, and its future contribution depends less on the sophistication of the technology involved than on the governance arrangements, funding ecosystems, and power relations within which that technology is embedded.
It is argued that harnessing the full potential of digital social innovation requires holistic strategies and participatory approaches to foster equitable and sustainable social change in the digital era.
V. Veena· International Journal of Rec...· 0 citations
Transforming individual knowledge into collective, institutionalized action remains a persistent challenge in sustainability governance. Although Digital Social Innovation (DSI) is widely invoked as a bridge across this gap, its function as a structured socio-technical learning strategy, rather than a digital platform initiative, remains theoretically underdeveloped and, in developing-economy contexts, empirically underexplored. This study reframes DSI as a leadership-enacted learning mechanism and examines the individual-level conditions under which it institutionalizes sustainability literacy among young social innovation practitioners. Drawing on socio-technical systems theory, social learning theory, and institutional theory, the study models DSI Learning Strategy as the mediating mechanism linking three leadership antecedents: Social Mission, Innovation Design, and Social Impact Focus, to Sustainability Literacy, reconceived as an emergent institutional capability. Cross-sectional survey data from 202 active young practitioners in Indonesian social innovation incubators were analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with 5,000-subsample bootstrapping. Social Mission (β = 0.450, p < 0.001) and Innovation Design (β = 0.199, p < 0.05) significantly predicted DSI Learning Strategy, whereas Social Impact Focus did not (β = 0.203, p = 0.072), a result attributable to construct collinearity rather than theoretical irrelevance. DSI Learning Strategy, in turn, exerted a strong effect on Sustainability Literacy (β = 0.832, p < 0.001), accounting for 69.2% of its variance, and significantly mediated the effects of Social Mission and Innovation Design on literacy. Governance Environment and Social Environment did not meet convergent-validity thresholds and are interpreted as distal institutional conditions rather than proximate individual-level predictors. These findings position DSI as an institutionalizing mechanism for sustainability literacy when driven by mission clarity and intentional innovation design, and contribute an empirically grounded, individual-level perspective that DSI scholarship has largely overlooked. Implications are drawn for incubator designers, social innovation facilitators, and sustainability policymakers in rapidly digitalizing developing economies.
Anton Herutomo, W. Dhewanto, E. Prasetio· F1000Research· 0 citations
It is argued that Africa’s effective participation in the 4IR depends not only on adopting technology but also on strong governance, sound regulatory frameworks, strategic policy implementation, cross-sector collaboration, targeted investment, and skills development.
Stella Gichuhi-Karau· Proceedings of the 1st Afric...· 0 citations
A Digital CSR Transformation Framework (DCTF) is developed that explains how digital technologies enhance CSR effectiveness through greater transparency, stakeholder integration, and scalable impact.
Raziur Chowdhury, Mohammad Mahbubul Haque· International Journal For Mu...· 0 citations
Advancing sustainable development requires organisations to align digital capabilities with social and environmental objectives, yet the mechanisms by which digital maturity and sustainability practices drive innovation remain poorly understood across organisational contexts. Drawing on dynamic capabilities, the Resource‐Based View and institutional perspectives on hybrid organisations, this study examines how the technological dimension of digital maturity and sustainability practices—social and environmental—influence social and environmental innovation (SEI), and how innovation barriers moderate these effects when comparing social economy enterprises (SEE) and non‐social economy enterprises (NSEE). Using microdata from the Flash Eurobarometer 486 covering 27 EU Member States and 12 additional countries, we estimate PLS‐SEM models and conduct multigroup analysis. The findings show that digital maturity significantly strengthens SEI in both organisational types, with a stronger effect in SEE than in NSEE. Social practices foster both SEI and the adoption of environmental practices, but environmental practices follow different innovation pathways across organisational contexts: they operate as a more stable direct driver in NSEE, whereas in SEE their contribution becomes stronger under high levels of innovation barriers. Crucially, barriers to innovation do not act as a uniform constraint. They dampen the translation of environmental practices into innovation in NSEE, but stimulate this relationship in SEE, suggesting that institutional friction can operate either as a barrier or as an enabling condition depending on the organisational context. The study advances an integrative, context‐dependent framework showing that the conversion of digital and sustainability‐oriented capabilities into social and environmental innovation varies across SEE and NSEE, organisational contexts characterised by different purpose and governance logics, and depends on the institutional frictions firms face.
A. M. Ciruela-Lorenzo, Juan Herrera‐Ballesteros, Pedro Mota Veiga et al.· Business Strategy and the En...· 0 citations
Digital technology innovation in enterprises is the core endogenous driving force behind the digital transformation of the real economy and is fundamentally reshaping the underlying logic of global industrial division of labour and competition. Through a systematic review of key domestic and international literature spanning the past two decades, this paper clarifies the origins of three foundational theories underpinning digital technology innovation: the digital extension of Schumpeter’s classical theory of innovation, the theory of digital platform ecosystems, and the theory of the value of data as a factor of production.The scope of existing research has expanded from the application of individual information technology tools to a multi-stakeholder collaborative innovation network comprising ‘data, algorithms, computing power and application scenarios’. Within the empirical research framework, academia has established a three-dimensional measurement framework encompassing ‘technology investment, data governance and scenario implementation’; influencing factors have moved beyond the traditional dual dimensions of internal resources and external institutions in conventional technological innovation, incorporating new variables specific to digitalisation such as the marketisation of data as a factor of production, computing power infrastructure and competition within platform ecosystems;The economic consequences encompass transmission pathways at three levels: micro-level enterprises, meso-level industries, and the macroeconomy. Analysis reveals that whilst digital technological innovation drives improvements in total factor productivity, business model iteration and industrial structure upgrading, it also gives rise to governance challenges such as ambiguous data property rights, algorithmic ethical distortions and digital monopolies.Future research should strengthen interdisciplinary integration across management, law and computer science, and focus on conducting localised studies tailored to China’s emerging market institutional context and the characteristics of domestic platform enterprises.
Ling Zhou· Economics & Business Man...· 0 citations
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