Environmental Sustainability, Health and Social Wellbeing and Agility in Industry 4.0 to Society 5.0 Transition

ABSTRACT Industry 4.0 is pushing the triple bottom line toward a necessary evolution: Society 5.0. Achieving this agile future depends on environmental sustainability, health and social wellbeing (H&SW). Therefore, this study,examines how environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategies operationalise the psychological, social and physical dimensions of the I4.0–S5.0 transition. Subsequently, it studies how H&SW supports agility across micro‐, meso‐ and macro‐industry levels. Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta‐Analyses (PRISMA) and Active Learning for Systematic Reviews (ASReview) prioritise 33 highly relevant articles from Scopus and Web of Science (2015–2025). This study then combines a scoping scan with term co‐occurrence mapping of this final dataset to categorise the findings across six research streams (RS). The findings demonstrate that ESG supports agility when it builds capability: psychological readiness through the capability approach (CA) at the micro‐level, social collaboration to boost social capital theory (SCT) at the meso‐level, and physical wellbeing attained through Regenerate, Share, Optimise, Loop, Virtualise, and Exchange (ReSOLVE) at the macro‐level. Crucially, it is demonstrated that circular principles enhance H&SW, utilising shared I4.0 platforms to reduce material intensity, ergonomic strain and occupational hazards. The contribution of this study is the AGILE framework—Anticipation, Governance‐alignment, Inclusion, Learning, and Ethical execution, which guides the H&SW‐centric, ESG‐driven I4.0–S5.0 transition.