Production Environments of Digital Innovations: a Scalar Perspective on Cultural Legitimacy in Zambian Coding Networks

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Abstract The rise of digital innovations is critical to many people and organizations in the Global South. By looking at programmers and their associated networks as digital production environment, this article aims to shed light on digital innovation processes to get a better understanding of those networks’ inherent characteristics. With analyzing coding networks in Zambia’s capital Lusaka, the study combines cultural legitimacy as a perspective from innovation scholars with scale. The case study is built on Geels’ and Verhees’ (2011) conceptualization of frames that stakeholders use to promote technology, and shows how members of coding networks produce and push legitimacy. Looking through the lenses of scale at perceived plausibility and salience of the production of frames, a variety of promoted frames around technology in connection to their actor’s credibility, empirical fit, and macro-cultural resonance are identified. Further, the research identifies influence structures within coding networks effecting their members scope of actions.