The Impact of Open Development Initiatives in Lower‐ and Middle Income Countries: A Review of the Literature

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore the field of open development in lower and middle income countries (LMIC) through a review of the literature. We examined 269 articles between 2010 and 2015, that were retrieved through keyword searches of the Scopus database and four ICT4D journals. This article adopts the pathway of effects model to analyze contributions according to inputs, mechanisms and outputs of open initiatives in LMICs. The review finds a fairly even spread of articles across the three stages of effects. Studies that disentangled reasons why or why not openness makes a difference provided the most insight to underlying mechanisms and impact of open initiatives. We found very little evidence that research within this area is concerned with the perspectives of poor and marginalized people – notably women. We therefore question the normative value of open development as a means to transform power relations. However, we argue that a more concentrated vision within this field is needed to exploit the full potential of digitally enabled openness for development.

Network Structure and User Roles of a Crowdsourcing Community _ The Context of Social Innovations for a Development Project

“…Put differently, socially innovative organizations should include their broader network in their innovation processes. Similar to the broader social innovation literature, the research stream of international development has experienced a shift towards open models over the past five years [5].…”

“…Referred to as open development, the application of open models in international development describes the configurations of content and the process to bring people together [5] and improve the lives of people. Often these open models are accompanied by the inclusion of ICT [21].…”

“…participation process, communication between actors) [5]. Considered as a progression from ICT for development (ICT4D), open development is attributed to the ability to radically change the development landscape [21].…”

“…Particularly in low-income communities, such innovations are indeed called for to influence social change. The successes of open innovation in the business world [2] and the power of the crowd [3] have inspired scholars to consider integrating crowd-based communities to foster social innovation [4] and open development processes [5]. As evidenced by extant research, crowdsourcing has great potential to establish communities and produce social innovations [6].…”

“…As such complex problems may be addressed through discussions by engaged users who share their ideas and/or experiences concerning new pertinent developments [7]. Decentralized collaboration and sharing engages more individuals enabling the collective search for initiatives and solutions that touch the lives of masses positively and meaningfully [5]; although attracting motivated participants necessitates a meaningful topic and dialogue to induce their engagement and interaction [8].…”