Information and Communication Technologies and Social Innovation: A

Structured Literature Review

Anindo Saka Fitri

and Mahendrawathi

Information Systems Department, Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember, Surabaya, Indonesia

Keywords:

Strategy, Social Innovation, ICT, Information Technology, Society.

Abstract:

Every company must try to innovate to survive in the global competition. Company can initiate business inno-

vation that is socially oriented or often called as social innovation. Social innovation arises when technology

innovation beneﬁts the social community. Many authors identify Information and Communication Technolo-

gies (ICT) as one of the drivers for social innovations. The purpose of this study is to deﬁne social innovation

and identify the type of ICT that most frequently drive social innovation. A structured literature review was

conducted to achieve the objective. Literatures are obtained from two online databases namely Science Direct

and Emerald Insight. The searching process results are 45 papers on Science Direct and 17 papers on Emerald

Insight. After conducting exclusion inclusion mechanism, 16 papers are used for further analysis. From these

literatures, deﬁnition of social innovation is determined. It was also found that mobile application is the most

often used ICT in driving social innovation. The result is expected to provide a reference in conducting future

research on social innovation.

1 INTRODUCTION

Companies in the business today must innovate to

survive the increasingly ﬁerce business competition.

The company can start to do business innovation that

is socially oriented or often called as social innova-

tion. More and more business people are trying to

understand their business models that are helped by

Social Innovation (Davies, 2014). Social innovation

is viewed as stemming from a new combination of

ideas that had previously been separate. Social inno-

vations are achieved through reconﬁguration of col-

lective, intentional and goaloriented actions of social

entrepreneurs (Cui et al., 2017). Social innovation

refers to the results expected from the technology in-

novation for the social community beneﬁts (Mulgan,

2010). Despite several publications mentioning social

innovation, the deﬁnition of social innovation is still

ambiguous. This prevent the development of general-

izable knowledge of Social innovation (Van der Have

and Rubalcaba, 2016).

Recent development of Information and Commu-

nication Technologies (ICT) helps accelerate the so-

cial innovation (Cui et al., 2017). Nowadays, ICT

is needed to help in managing the environment and

reduce the poverty level in a country by supporting

marginalised people with appropriate access to infor-

mation, education, health, as well as ﬁnancial services

(Ashraf and Malik, 2011); (Cecchini and Scott, 2003)

(Thatchenkery et al., 2004). There must be actors

such as local government who repairs the condition

so that the local businesses prosper. But in the social

innovation with ICT, there are individuals motivated

by the spiritual religion, guilty feeling, affection and

etc., to develop their communities (Sandeep and Rav-

ishankar, 2015). These individuals can be described

as social entrepreneurs. They play important roles in

creating condition and managing the process that al-

lows the local businesses to develop and help the area

out of poverty. Therefore, it is important to investigate

the mechanisms underlying ICT that enable social in-

novation. So, social entrepreneurs get proﬁts for the

company and at the same time for the social environ-

ment.

According to the expert, ICT persistently creating

new types of markets that enabled new patterns of in-

dustry dynamics (Lee et al., 2015). (Yunus, 1998)

predicts that poor people throughout the world are ca-

pable and ready to use technology, and eventually this

will alleviate poverty. Therefore, it can be said that

technology can be one of the tools for social develop-

ment.

The problem that became the main focus of this

journal review was deﬁning social innovation and ob-

130

Fitri, A. and Mahendrawathi, .

Information and Communication Technologies and Social Innovation: A Structured Literature Review.

DOI: 10.5220/0009906701300135

In Proceedings of the International Conferences on Information System and Technology (CONRIST 2019), pages 130-135

ISBN: 978-989-758-453-4

taining what types of ICT that was implemented to

develop social innovation. The results are expected to

provide a reference for further related studies in social

innovation through ICT implementation.

2 METHODS

This stage explained the methodology stages done by

the authors in this paper review. A systematic review

was undertaken using Kitchenham steps (Kitchen-

ham, 2007). First step is determining the topic and

the research questions. This is followed by search

of literature. The literature are ﬁltered based on cer-

tain inclusion and exclusion criteria. The results are

assessed further following certain assessment proce-

dure. The ﬁnal step is reporting the result of the re-

view.

2.1 Determining the Topic

In this stage, author looked for the topic that is impor-

tant to be the research material. This research related

to the topic in the enterprise system, therefore authors

tried to ﬁnd the problem related to the topic. Authors

were interested to discuss about social innovation in

business that is inﬂuenced by the use of ICT. The de-

termination of social innovation can be used various

methods. Therefore, author wanted to ﬁnd the most

used method and was suitable to determine the social

innovation with literature review.

2.2 Determining the Research

Questions

Two research questions are arranged as a guide for

conducting mapping studies and identifying research

opportunities. Based on the previous explanation, the

following were the research questions proposed by

this paper:

RQ1: What is the deﬁnition of social innovation?

RQ2: What types of ICT are used for social innova-

tion?

2.3 Collecting the Paper

The process of collecting papers for this paper review

was based on the popular paper search engine that

are Science Direct (sciencedirect.com) and Emerald

Insight (emeraldinsight.com). The limitation of the

papers was these papers were able to be downloaded

in the scope of Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember

(ITS), that means these papers were open access to

academic community of ITS.

2.4 Paper Selection

Paper selection steps are intended to select and iden-

tify primary studies that provide direct evidence about

the research question. From the sources for collecting

papers, authors do the selection process based on sev-

eral stages, as follows:

2.4.1 Keyword Selection

Keywords used in the paper ﬁnding in each source

engine were “Social Innovation” AND ”Informa-

tion and Communication Technologies” AND ”Com-

puter” OR ”Social Innovation” AND ”Information

and Communication Technologies” AND ”Mobile”,

because this paper review discussed a topic about

ICT (computer/mobile) for social innovation. Au-

thors have matched the keywords with this paper’s

objectives.

2.4.2 Inclusion Exclusion Selection

The several inclusion and exclusion used to select the

paper before the research was conducted. Inclusion

criteria were: written in English; papers published in

between 2014-2018; papers match the keyword insert

on Science Direct and Emerald Insight. Therefore,

exclusion criteria were: no theory books; no textbook;

papers that were not focused on Social Innovation; pa-

per that not focus on ICT and its application on Social

Innovation.

2.5 Content Selection (Weighting)

The quality of papers evaluated based on inclusion

and exclusion criteria. The assessment procedure is

based on value associated with scores: Agree/Match

= 3, Part Agree/Part Match = 2, Disagree/Not Match

= 1, Not Related = 0. This weighting based on advice

from Likert (Djaali, 2008). Based on the proposed re-

search question, the following Figure 1 refers to some

assessment used on the highest, which was 3 points.

Figure 1: RQ-based assessment.

Information and Communication Technologies and Social Innovation: A Structured Literature Review

131

3 RESULTS

In relation to the stages discussed on the methodology

chapter, this chapter points out on the results obtained

from each stage.

3.1 The Result of Paper Collection

By using the keyword explained on the methodol-

ogy chapter, 2 searches were done on 2 main sources,

(Science Direct and Emerald Insight). After doing the

inclusion and exclusion, 75 results were found on Sci-

ence Direct and 17 results were on Emerald Insight,

as it can be seen on Table 2 as follows. Then, the ti-

tle an the author of the paper founded can be seen on

Figure 3.

Figure 2: The result of paper collection.

Figure 3: Papers founded.

space

Figure 4: Papers founded(Cont.).

3.2 Papers Selection

The ﬁrst selection was carried out through skimming

on title, abstract, introduction, literature review and

conclusion, in which there was no discussion found

related to social innovation, so that the paper be-

longed to exclusion. By doing that selection, 16 pa-

pers of 75 Science Direct journals and 17 Emerald

Insight journals were obtained (14 Science Direct pa-

pers and 2 Emerald Insight papers) which come un-

der the criteria and then were assessed on Figure 1.

Through the use of assessment which was appropri-

ate with RQ explained on methodology, the following

Figure 3 is deﬁned as the assessment result of the ob-

tained papers.

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132

space

Figure 5: Assessment.

Source of Figure 1 : [1] (Davies, 2014) , [2] (Cui

et al., 2017), [3] (Mulgan, 2010), [4] (Van der Have

and Rubalcaba, 2016), [5] (Ashraf and Malik, 2011),

[6] (Cecchini and Scott, 2003), [7] (Thatchenkery

et al., 2004), [8] (Sandeep and Ravishankar, 2015),

[9] (Lee et al., 2015), [10] (Yunus, 1998), [11]

(Kitchenham and Charters, 2007), [12] (Djaali, 2008),

[13] (Wu et al., 2018), [14] (Rahman et al., 2017),

[15] (Wehn and Evers, 2015) , [16] (Shin and Kim,

2018).

According to Figure 5, the papers whose value

was high were paper [1], [2], [3], [4], [15] with 6 as

its values. It was assumed that these papers answered

RQ1 and RQ2. That means those papers contain the

deﬁnition of social innovation from expert. Morover,

those papers stated the type of ICT that they used and

also the case study clearly. Meanwhile, paper [10] had

the lowest value, which was 1. This journal only be

able to answer RQ2. That means, paper [10] doesn’t

mention the deﬁnition of social innovation from the

expert. Beside that, the case study and the type of

ICT used in that paper research was not clear.

3.3 The Deﬁnition of Social Innovation

There were a lot of perspectives in understanding the

deﬁnition of social innovation. Various deﬁnitions

proposed by the researcher in this review journal were

compared on Figure 6 below.

space

Figure 6: The deﬁnition of social innovation.

From Figure 6 the researchers emphasize social

aspects. Some researchers perceived social innova-

tion as a concept that can provide solutions to prob-

lems in society. However, there are two important

characteristics of social innovation: ﬁrst, the novelty

and effectiveness of ideas when implemented and sec-

ond, their orientation towards solving social problems

that produce mutual beneﬁts rather than individuals.

The researchers say that social innovation also trig-

gers social change (Wehn and Evers, 2015). Social

innovation creates new relationships and systems of

government that can empower new actors. Social in-

novation can also generate new ways to collaborate

and participate, reduce and integrate the traditional

roles of producers, buyers and users. In all cases,

social innovation can strengthen new capabilities

for each actor and optimize current resources for

the future. From the explanation above, authors

concluded that social innovation is innovation that

aims to provide solutions to the main challenges

faced by the community and, in parallel, improve

the capacity of the community and other actors in

creating new services and products that beneﬁt not

only business but also improve the quality of life of

the community.

3.4 Type of ICT Used for Social

Innovation

The type of ICT used for social innovation in each

journal is described in Figure 6. In addition, the name

of the system is also mentioned and where the re-

search of case studies of each paper was analyzed.

Information and Communication Technologies and Social Innovation: A Structured Literature Review

133

space

Figure 7: Type of ICT with the application of social inno-

vation.

From Figure 7, the type of ICT that was mostly

used as social innovation in the founded journal was

mobile application. It was because the application

form mobile was in a rapid development. Beside the

use in business, mobile application also used to de-

velop society and region. There were 5 papers men-

tioned about mobile application that could be imple-

mented for social innovation. It was added with a pa-

per which mentioned the usage of all types of ICT

which meant they also use mobile application. As in

paper [1], it mentioned that ICT in the form of mobile

application integrated with provider and government

to develop transportation to people with special needs.

In paper [9], it also mentioned about mobile payment

in some banks in Brazil that could help payment in

which useful for the state’s economic development.

Therefore, based on the reviewed journal, it could be

concluded that the types of ICT in the form of mobile

application was the most often used by social innova-

tion.

4 DISCUSSION

Social innovation could not be separated from the pro-

cess of company business. From the result of the

deﬁnition of social innovation discussed previously,

social innovation plays in creating service and new

product which is beneﬁcial not only in terms of busi-

ness but also improve the life quality of the people.

Therefore, with a good business management pro-

cess, a company also could create social innovation

that was beneﬁcial for the company itself. Business

management itself is also related to the company’s

strategy. The company’s strategy is in the form of

long-term plans done by the company, while business

processes are activities that are measurable and struc-

tured to produce certain outputs (Davenport, 1993).

In social innovation, strategy plays an important role

(Vitale, 2005). Business people will direct social in-

novation projects with detailed plans that will add

public value.

In addition, the most serious challenge of social

innovation is resources (Cels et al., 2012). Orga-

nization that have good resources do not guarantee

success if the business owner cannot manage these

resources effectively (Sirmon et al., 2011) (Barney

et al., 2011). So, it needs to be described how to man-

age resources in accordance with social innovation to

be achieved in an area. From the discussion above,

the relationship between each knowledge dimensions

can be seen in the form of conceptual model in Figure

8 which can be developed for further research.

Figure 8: The conceptual model.

5 CONCLUSIONS

After conducting search of journal in the main source

(Science Direct and Emerald Insight), with the inclu-

sion and exclusion, it was obtained that 75 results

in Science Direct and 17 results in Emerald Insight.

During the research, the papers that has highest value

are paper [5], [6], [7], [8], [17] with 6 as its values.

It was assumed that these papers answered RQ1 and

RQ2. Whereas, the paper who has the lowest value

which is 1 was paper [14] where the journal only an-

swer RQ2 althought it was no clear enough. RQ1 has

been answered that some various deﬁnitions from the

researcher in the founded journal could be concluded

that “Social innovation is the innovation aims to

give solution toward main challenge faced by so-

ciety and in parallel, improve the capacity of so-

ciety and other actors in creating service and new

product that is beneﬁcial not only in terms of busi-

ness but also in the improvement of life quality of

the society”. Next investigation was for RQ2 which

is the type of ICT that was mostly used to the social

innovation in the founded paper. That ICT was mo-

bile application. It was because the application for

mobile was in the rapid development. Beside it usage

in business, mobile application was also used to de-

velop society and region. For future research, we can

related mobile application for Social Innovation with

Business Strategy or IS/IT Strategy.

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134

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