Abstract

As enterprises now operate in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), the metal fabrication industry is undergoing tremendous technological trends with very detrimental impacts if not adopted. The purpose of this research is to explore the implications of informality on technological innovations adoption and new policy directives for formalization of metal fabrication micro-enterprises in Zimbabwe.  Enterprises that are unregistered and unregulated but not illegal are omnipresent and constitute a large part of the economy in developing countries. Informality is a perennial phenomenon with extensive ramifications on enterprises. How informality impairs the propensity of unregistered enterprises to embrace technological innovations ushered by 4IR is identified as a research gap. In pursuit of this investigation, an in-depth review of theoretical and empirical studies was conducted. The primary data sources were electronic databases: Google Scholar, Science Direct, Scopus, and EBSCO. The articles reviewed focused on the effects of informality on numerous organizational phenomena. The findings shed light on the potential impacts of informality on the acquisition of 4IR technological innovations. The study offers insights into new policy directions for addressing informality by the National Governments can take to address informality.