- Convenors:
-
Fandi Achmad
(University of Oxford)
Xiaomian Dai (University of Oxford)
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Paper panel
- Stream:
- Digital futures: AI, data & platform governance
Short Abstract
This panel examines how firms in the Global South build digital technologies, combining in-house development and external platforms. It probes capability formation, economic value capture, and power asymmetries to ask when digital technologies enable inclusion beyond dependency.
Description
Digitalisation is recasting how firms in the Global South learn, produce, and compete. Yet “building digital technologies” rarely means only in-house development: firms in the Global South blend internal capabilities with external technologies, from global platforms and SaaS to vendor solutions and open-source tools. We investigate the economics, politics, and practices of these hybrid pathways through the lenses of technological learning, absorptive capacity, and technological upgrading in global value networks, while engaging with critiques of platform capitalism and data colonialism. The panel goes beyond deepening technological lock-in by interrogating how firm-level digital capability in the Global South can be grown in ways that redistribute power, value, and voice.
We invite contributions from both theoretical and empirical studies through technological capabilities and learning, absorptive capacity, and platform power and data colonialism lenses that examine:
1. When does buying external digital tech build firm-level capability, and when does it entrench dependency?
2. How do firms domesticate imported digital technologies to local workflows?
3. How do South–South, open-source, or indigenous digital tech knowledge flows accelerate firm-level absorptive capacity in the Global South?
4. How is the value generated by datafied production allocated, and how can firms in the Global South secure a fairer share?
5. How can policy, standards, and rules guide digitalisation to build firm-level local digital technology capabilities and absorptive capacity, and limit platform dominance and data extractivism?
Accepted papers
Paper short abstract
Using 2006–2010 firm data from 19 Latin American countries, I show digital servitisation exports boost incremental and market-novel innovation, especially when firms institutionalise digital knowledge routines (FDKAI) and invest in R&D and training.
Paper long abstract
Manufacturers increasingly pair products with digitally delivered services for foreign customers, yet we know little about how these Digital Servitisation Exports (DSE) reshape firm innovation in developing economies. Using firm-level data on 19 Latin American countries’ manufacturers in 2006 and 2010, I introduce a practical DSE measure and a Firm Digital Knowledge Acquisition Index (FDKAI) that captures routines and platforms for sourcing foreign knowledge through digital channels. To address selection, I combine entropy balancing, logit models with country, industry, and year fixed effects, and Oster’s coefficient-stability bounds in estimating DSE-innovation outcomes relationships. Three takeaways emerge. First, DSE is associated with more innovation of both kinds: incremental improvements that refine existing offerings (exploitative) and market-novel solutions that push the frontier (exploratory). Second, the innovation payoffs from DSE arise not from digital exposure alone but from complementarities: firms convert foreign digital knowledge into innovation outcomes when FDKAI works in bundles with conversion capabilities such as R&D and structured employee training. Third, exploratory innovation demands a richer bundle than exploitative innovation, suggesting that stronger conversion capabilities are required to turn DSE-enabled incremental gains into market-novel breakthroughs. These findings underscore that manufacturers in developing countries should treat DSE not merely as a sales route but as an engineered learning system, for which they should institutionalise platform-mediated workflows and invest in R&D and employee training.
Paper short abstract
This paper explores how Global South entrepreneurs re-engineer digital tools through frugal innovation. It shifts the focus from "top-down adoption" to "bottom-up adaptation," showing how SMEs build unique capabilities to bypass infrastructure gaps and assert power in the global digital economy.
Paper long abstract
Innovation in the Global South is frequently characterized by "resource-constrained" or "frugal" approaches, yet the digital dimension of this phenomenon remains under-theorized. This paper investigates how informal entrepreneurs in Nigeria engage in frugal digital innovation. While mainstream discourse often frames digital transformation as a top-down adoption of Western software, this study highlights a bottom-up pathway where entrepreneurs utilize "good enough" technologies to overcome high costs and poor infrastructure.
Using a qualitative case study approach, the research examines the capabilities developed by small business owners as they blend traditional business logic with digital affordances. The paper argues that these practices are not merely survival tactics but are strategic exercises of power. By creating localized digital workarounds, informal firms resist the "standardisation" imposed by global tech giants and build sovereign innovation ecosystems that are resilient to local economic shocks.
Findings from this paper will offer a new perspective on building digital technologies by showing that for the Global South, the act of "building" often resides in the creative adaptation of the "already built."
Paper short abstract
This paper analyses how Kazakhstan’s electronics firms in the semi-periphery build digital technologies through in-house capabilities and foreign inputs. It shows how such strategies enable learning and upgrading but also reproduce dependency, especially via reliance on Chinese technologies.
Paper long abstract
This paper examines how firms in the semi-periphery build digital technologies through hybrid pathways that combine in-house capabilities with foreign technologies. Focusing on Kazakhstan’s electronics sector, it analyses when such strategies enable technological learning and upgrading, and when they reproduce dependency and power asymmetries. Drawing on semi-periphery theory (Amin, 1978; Cairó-i-Céspedes & Palacios Cívico, 2022; Wallerstein & Wallerstein, 2011), the paper situates semi-peripheral firms between center and quasi-center (Cheng & Zhai, 2021), technology producers and peripheral users, highlighting their constrained but strategic agency in navigating global digital production networks.
Based on fieldwork interviews conducted in Kazakhstan in 2022 and 2023, the study identifies four business models among electronics firms that reflect distinct approaches to capability formation. These range from firms primarily localising imported Russian and Chinese technologies with limited domestic hardware and software development, to more advanced models that layer in-house R&D and software capabilities onto imported hardware, including a fabless IT firm outsourcing component production while retaining core design and development functions.
The findings show that reliance on external digital technologies, predominantly from China, can both support learning and entrench dependency, depending on how firms domesticate technologies and invest in absorptive capacity. While Chinese partnerships dominate due to cost, availability, and the absence of local manufacturing ecosystems, firms’ positions in the semi-periphery allow limited but meaningful scope for upgrading through software development, systems integration, and regional South–South knowledge flows.
Paper short abstract
Scholarship often claims that countries in Africa struggle to innovate because of weak 'macro-institutions'. However, the growth of the mobile money sector in Africa reveals that innovation can occur so long as regulators and firms design effective 'meso-institutions'.
Paper long abstract
How can African countries innovate when they have weak 'macro-institutions' often emerging from colonialism - corrupt and under-resourced legislatures, courts and police? In theory, weak macro-institutions, which apply to everyone in society, discourage firms from engaging in the type of long term relationships with each other which are required to develop new technological innovations.
The growth of the mobile money sector - now numbering over 500 million active accounts in Africa - reveals that innovation can occur so long as regulators and firms design effective 'meso-institutions'. These institutions are rules for specific sectors of the economy. Meso-institutions are a combination of private ordering (rules designed and implemented by firms and customers, such as contracts and industry norms) and, to varying degrees, regulatory intervention in that private ordering (through regulation and/or monitoring contracts and norms).
Choices made by regulators shape meso-institutions which in turn determine which sectors will scale in an economy and how those sectors can operate despite weak macro-institutions. This makes regulators the 'hidden gatekeepers' of innovation in Africa. Regulatory choices supported mobile money in several African countries, creating significant growth in the sector: Kenya (30 million users), Tanzania (16 million users), and Uganda (26 million users). In contrast, decisions made by regulators generated meso-institutions in South Africa and Nigeria which supported the banking sector, resulting in very small mobile money sectors in those countries. This analysis suggests scholars and practitioners in international development should pay more attention to meso-institutions, through, for example, increased training of regulators.