Christopher Foster
Biographic Data
| ID | 3711136 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christopher Foster |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christopher |
| FAMILY NAME | Foster |
| SIGNATURE | FOSTER C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Manchester |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7827-2485 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 220 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1964 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Contextualizing digital platforms in the informal economy: Policy and reality in Jakarta, Indonesia
In recent years, many cities worldwide have witnessed a dynamic shift in their urban economic landscapes, driven by the rapid rise of digital platforms that intersect with urban governance. Despite a range of cases across the so-called “informal sector” (e.g., motorcycle taxis and domestic work), existing literature provides little empirical material that sketches out concrete landscapes of how we can understand the expansion of digital platforms…
Conceptualising urban informality in the platform economy: Regulation, legitimisation, value extraction and collective agency
Cities in the global South are rapidly digitalising, with digital platforms already becoming well established and creating new disruptions as well as opportunities. Much of these cities’ urban life is still shaped by informality, yet there has been little conceptualisation around the intersection of platforms and informality. To develop our understanding of urban informality in the platform age, this paper situates Southern urbanism at this inter…
Conceptualizing variety in platform capitalism: The dynamics of variegated capitalism in Thai digital marketplace platforms
Digital platforms are expanding globally with significant implications for how economies operate. We argue that the literature has tended to over-emphasize the globalized and homogeneous impacts of platforms with less analysis of variable patterns across space. To conceptualize variety, the notion of variegated capitalism is examined to provide insights into the nature of platform capitalism. Conceptual discussion is supported by the case of digi…
China’s digital expansion in the Global South: Systematic literature review and future research agenda
At the intersection of China’s growing global presence and growing digital power lies its digital expansion in the low- and middle-income countries of the Global South. Worth billions of US$ annually in trade and investment, and having a significant impact on these countries’ social and economic development, this phenomenon has been relatively ignored by researchers to date. However, it has nonetheless now been sufficiently studied to warrant a s…
China’s digital expansion in the Global South: Special issue introduction
Intellectual property rights and control in the digital economy: Examining the expansion of M-Pesa
The importance of intellectual capital in the digital economy implies an increasingly central role of intellectual property rights (IPR).However, there are concerns that the expansion of intellectual property rights concentrates profits from innovation, creating "intellectual monopolies".This is particularly concerning with respect to strong global regimes of intellectual property that foster economic inequities between the Global South and North…
Globalisation in reverse? Reconfiguring the geographies of value chains and production networks
Standing at a crossroads, where ongoing ‘slowbalisation’ coincides with new forces such as the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, heightened geopolitical tensions, the emergence of disruptive technologies and the increasing urgency of addressing environmental challenges, many important questions remain unsolved regarding the nature and impact of the current economic globalisation. This special issue on ‘Globalisation in Reverse? Reconfiguring the…
Datafication, value and power in developing countries: Big data in two Indian public service organizations
Latecomer Economies and National Digital Policy: An Industrial Policy Perspective
The global economy is experiencing digital transformation with impacts felt in developing countries. Digital firms and capabilities, however, remain concentrated in advanced economies. These processes indicate an emerging source of global economic inequality and a widening of the technological gap. Recently, there has been a growth in interventionist digital policy in developing and emerging economies but research has so far made a limited analys…
Covid-19 and the case for global development
Research Agendas for the Digital Economy
The International Trade Regime and the Quest for Free Digital Trade
The global economy is experiencing the digitalization of production, exchange, and consumption of goods and services. The internet and cross-border data flows are becoming important channels of trade as more products are traded through the web or integrate features that rely on digital connectivity. Reflecting the autonomy states have to enact such policies, national variations in internet governance have expanded over the previous decade, with s…
Digital Control in Value Chains: Challenges of Connectivity for East African Firms
In recent years, Internet connectivity has greatly improved across the African continent. This article examines the consequences that this shift has had for East African firms that are part of global value chains (GVCs). Prior work yielded contradictory expectations: firms might benefit from connectivity through increased efficiencies and improved access to markets, although they might also be further marginalized through increasing control of le…
A Quantitative Approach to Innovation in Agricultural Value Chains: Evidence from Kenyan Horticulture
Reconsidering the role of the digital in global production networks
Global production networks (GPNs) have become a key framework in conceptualizing linkages, power and structure in globalized production. However, this framework has been less successful in integrating the influence of digital information and ICTs in production, and this problematic in a world where relationships and power are increasingly mediated by digital information flows and resources. We thus look to adapt the GPN framework to allow more su…
Africa’s information revolution: Technical regimes and production networks in South Africa and Tanzania
James Murphy and Pádraig Carmody’s new book, ‘Africa’s Information Revolution: Technical Regimes and Production Networks in South Africa and Tanzania’ explores the diffusion of information and communications technologies (ICTs) taking place throughout Africa. It does this through an analysis of the expectations following the rapid take-up of ICTs, and through exploring cases of ICT use in small and medium enterprises in two countries (the tourism…
Introduction to the Tsinghua Bamboo-Strip Manuscripts
The Tsinghua University bamboo-strip manuscripts are among the most extraordinary collections of ancient texts discovered in China to date. In Introduction to the Tsinghua Bamboo-Strip Manuscripts, Liu Guozhong, one of the scholars intimately involved in editing the Tsinghua strips, offers a straightforward overview to the complexities inherent in researching this collection. Liu provides an invaluable glimpse into how these artifacts were cleane…
New models of inclusive innovation for development
This special issue of Innovation and Development focuses on inclusive innovation; specifically on analysis of the new models of this form of innovation which are emerging. After discussing the growing need for research into those models, this editorial paper interrogates the meaning of 'inclusive innovation' and what it means to understand inclusive innovation in terms of models. The editorial then outlines the contribution of the papers that mak…
Nurturing user–producer interaction: Inclusive Innovation Flows in a Low-Income Mobile Phone Market
Understandings of inclusive innovation in developing country low-income markets have typically taken one of two perspectives. On the one hand, a business perspective on the role of top-down, strategic innovation from larger-firm actors. And on the other hand, a more developmental perspective that highlights the role localized practices play in making new goods and services applicable to local needs. Both are demonstrably important to successful i…
Conceptualising Inclusive Innovation: Modifying Systems of Innovation Frameworks to Understand Diffusion of New Technology to Low-Income Consumers
Analyzing policy for inclusive innovation: The mobile sector and base-of-the-pyramid markets in Kenya
Recent interest in inclusive innovation to serve base-of-the-pyramid markets has so far produced relatively little evidence about the role of policy. Drawing on cases from Kenya's mobile phone sector that have successfully scaled innovations to poor consumers, we suggest that policy-making is not only present, but can also have a significant role in shaping and supporting inclusive innovation systems. In these cases, inclusive innovation has been…
Cosmetic Surgery: Feminist Perspectives
Cosmetic surgery is gaining popularity not only in the U.S., but worldwide. The sheer number of procedures being performed makes it seem “normal,” and in the statistical sense it is. Feminist therapists are likely to have clients who are contemplating undergoing one or more of these procedures. Therapists ought to help their clients to understand the motivations underlying a decision to undergo surgery for the sake of improving on nature. In the …
Cabinet Government in the Twentieth Century
This paper examines the main features of the cabinet system as it had emerged during the twentieth century, and which Jennings did so much to crystallize in his pioneering study on Cabinet Government. It then assesses the main changes that have occurred over successive administrations since the late 1970s, and concludes that even if cabinet government seemed to return in 1990 and 2003, it was without the cabinet system that had underpinned and ma…
Reflections on the True Significance of the Scott Report for Government Accountability
The immediate impact of the Scott report was slight because it had no conclusion and led to no ministerial or other resignations. Reasons for this inconclusiveness were examined, including conventions of the judicial process, the difficulty Scott had in defining the offences he was examining, the slipperiness of those offences as constitutional conventions and Scott's lack of grasp of administrative processes. Yet his report is a mine of informat…
Rival Explanations of Public Ownership, Its Failure and Privatization
This article contrasts three types of explanation of three events – the initial nationalization of many British industries, mainly in the 1940s, the failure of most nationalized industries to be economically successful by the 1970s and the privatization of most of them in the 1980s and 1990s. Its first section summarizes briefly an ordinary historical account of each event as developed elsewhere at greater length (in Foster 1992). The second sect…
New models of inclusive innovation for development
This special issue of Innovation and Development focuses on inclusive innovation; specifically on analysis of the new models of this form of innovation which are emerging. After discussing the growing need for research into those models, this editorial paper interrogates the meaning of 'inclusive innovation' and what it means to understand inclusive innovation in terms of models. The editorial then outlines the contribution of the papers that mak…
Covid-19 and the case for global development
Conceptualising Inclusive Innovation: Modifying Systems of Innovation Frameworks to Understand Diffusion of New Technology to Low-Income Consumers
Globalisation in reverse? Reconfiguring the geographies of value chains and production networks
Standing at a crossroads, where ongoing ‘slowbalisation’ coincides with new forces such as the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, heightened geopolitical tensions, the emergence of disruptive technologies and the increasing urgency of addressing environmental challenges, many important questions remain unsolved regarding the nature and impact of the current economic globalisation. This special issue on ‘Globalisation in Reverse? Reconfiguring the…
Reconsidering the role of the digital in global production networks
Global production networks (GPNs) have become a key framework in conceptualizing linkages, power and structure in globalized production. However, this framework has been less successful in integrating the influence of digital information and ICTs in production, and this problematic in a world where relationships and power are increasingly mediated by digital information flows and resources. We thus look to adapt the GPN framework to allow more su…
China’s digital expansion in the Global South: Systematic literature review and future research agenda
At the intersection of China’s growing global presence and growing digital power lies its digital expansion in the low- and middle-income countries of the Global South. Worth billions of US$ annually in trade and investment, and having a significant impact on these countries’ social and economic development, this phenomenon has been relatively ignored by researchers to date. However, it has nonetheless now been sufficiently studied to warrant a s…
Analyzing policy for inclusive innovation: The mobile sector and base-of-the-pyramid markets in Kenya
Recent interest in inclusive innovation to serve base-of-the-pyramid markets has so far produced relatively little evidence about the role of policy. Drawing on cases from Kenya's mobile phone sector that have successfully scaled innovations to poor consumers, we suggest that policy-making is not only present, but can also have a significant role in shaping and supporting inclusive innovation systems. In these cases, inclusive innovation has been…
Nurturing user–producer interaction: Inclusive Innovation Flows in a Low-Income Mobile Phone Market
Understandings of inclusive innovation in developing country low-income markets have typically taken one of two perspectives. On the one hand, a business perspective on the role of top-down, strategic innovation from larger-firm actors. And on the other hand, a more developmental perspective that highlights the role localized practices play in making new goods and services applicable to local needs. Both are demonstrably important to successful i…
The International Trade Regime and the Quest for Free Digital Trade
The global economy is experiencing the digitalization of production, exchange, and consumption of goods and services. The internet and cross-border data flows are becoming important channels of trade as more products are traded through the web or integrate features that rely on digital connectivity. Reflecting the autonomy states have to enact such policies, national variations in internet governance have expanded over the previous decade, with s…
Digital Control in Value Chains: Challenges of Connectivity for East African Firms
In recent years, Internet connectivity has greatly improved across the African continent. This article examines the consequences that this shift has had for East African firms that are part of global value chains (GVCs). Prior work yielded contradictory expectations: firms might benefit from connectivity through increased efficiencies and improved access to markets, although they might also be further marginalized through increasing control of le…
Conceptualizing variety in platform capitalism: The dynamics of variegated capitalism in Thai digital marketplace platforms
Digital platforms are expanding globally with significant implications for how economies operate. We argue that the literature has tended to over-emphasize the globalized and homogeneous impacts of platforms with less analysis of variable patterns across space. To conceptualize variety, the notion of variegated capitalism is examined to provide insights into the nature of platform capitalism. Conceptual discussion is supported by the case of digi…
A Quantitative Approach to Innovation in Agricultural Value Chains: Evidence from Kenyan Horticulture
Cosmetic Surgery: Feminist Perspectives
Cosmetic surgery is gaining popularity not only in the U.S., but worldwide. The sheer number of procedures being performed makes it seem “normal,” and in the statistical sense it is. Feminist therapists are likely to have clients who are contemplating undergoing one or more of these procedures. Therapists ought to help their clients to understand the motivations underlying a decision to undergo surgery for the sake of improving on nature. In the …
Cabinet Government in the Twentieth Century
This paper examines the main features of the cabinet system as it had emerged during the twentieth century, and which Jennings did so much to crystallize in his pioneering study on Cabinet Government. It then assesses the main changes that have occurred over successive administrations since the late 1970s, and concludes that even if cabinet government seemed to return in 1990 and 2003, it was without the cabinet system that had underpinned and ma…
Rival Explanations of Public Ownership, Its Failure and Privatization
This article contrasts three types of explanation of three events – the initial nationalization of many British industries, mainly in the 1940s, the failure of most nationalized industries to be economically successful by the 1970s and the privatization of most of them in the 1980s and 1990s. Its first section summarizes briefly an ordinary historical account of each event as developed elsewhere at greater length (in Foster 1992). The second sect…
The Political Economy of Regulation: Interests, Ideology, Voters, and the Uk Regulation of Railways Act 1844
Government regulation of the railways in the United Kingdom dates back to the 1840s. Between 1840 and 1844 three regulatory Acts were passed, and a system of government inspection set up which has remained substantially unaltered to the present day. The principal Act, that of 1844, contained controversial powers of rate‐capping, state purchase of railways, and detailed price and quantity regulation. It is still frequently held that the Victorian …
Intellectual property rights and control in the digital economy: Examining the expansion of M-Pesa
The importance of intellectual capital in the digital economy implies an increasingly central role of intellectual property rights (IPR).However, there are concerns that the expansion of intellectual property rights concentrates profits from innovation, creating "intellectual monopolies".This is particularly concerning with respect to strong global regimes of intellectual property that foster economic inequities between the Global South and North…
Reflections on the True Significance of the Scott Report for Government Accountability
The immediate impact of the Scott report was slight because it had no conclusion and led to no ministerial or other resignations. Reasons for this inconclusiveness were examined, including conventions of the judicial process, the difficulty Scott had in defining the offences he was examining, the slipperiness of those offences as constitutional conventions and Scott's lack of grasp of administrative processes. Yet his report is a mine of informat…
Design of Water-Resource Systems: New Techniques for Relating Economic Objectives, Engineering Analysis, and Government Planning
Journal Article Design of Water-Resource Systems: New Techniques for Relating Economic Objectives, Engineering Analysis, and Government PlanningPublic Expenditure: Appraisal and Control Get access Design of Water-Resource Systems: New Techniques for Relating Economic Objectives, Engineering Analysis, and Government Planning. By A. Maas Et al. (London: Macmillan, 1962. Pp. xviii + 620. 90s)Public Expenditure: Appraisal and Control. Edited by A. T.…
The Political Economy of Regulation: Interests, Ideology, Voters, and the Uk Regulation of Railways Act 1844
Government regulation of the railways in the United Kingdom dates back to the 1840s. Between 1840 and 1844 three regulatory Acts were passed, and a system of government inspection set up which has remained substantially unaltered to the present day. The principal Act, that of 1844, contained controversial powers of rate‐capping, state purchase of railways, and detailed price and quantity regulation. It is still frequently held that the Victorian …
Rival Explanations of Public Ownership, Its Failure and Privatization
This article contrasts three types of explanation of three events – the initial nationalization of many British industries, mainly in the 1940s, the failure of most nationalized industries to be economically successful by the 1970s and the privatization of most of them in the 1980s and 1990s. Its first section summarizes briefly an ordinary historical account of each event as developed elsewhere at greater length (in Foster 1992). The second sect…
Reflections on the True Significance of the Scott Report for Government Accountability
The immediate impact of the Scott report was slight because it had no conclusion and led to no ministerial or other resignations. Reasons for this inconclusiveness were examined, including conventions of the judicial process, the difficulty Scott had in defining the offences he was examining, the slipperiness of those offences as constitutional conventions and Scott's lack of grasp of administrative processes. Yet his report is a mine of informat…
Cabinet Government in the Twentieth Century
This paper examines the main features of the cabinet system as it had emerged during the twentieth century, and which Jennings did so much to crystallize in his pioneering study on Cabinet Government. It then assesses the main changes that have occurred over successive administrations since the late 1970s, and concludes that even if cabinet government seemed to return in 1990 and 2003, it was without the cabinet system that had underpinned and ma…
Cosmetic Surgery: Feminist Perspectives
Cosmetic surgery is gaining popularity not only in the U.S., but worldwide. The sheer number of procedures being performed makes it seem “normal,” and in the statistical sense it is. Feminist therapists are likely to have clients who are contemplating undergoing one or more of these procedures. Therapists ought to help their clients to understand the motivations underlying a decision to undergo surgery for the sake of improving on nature. In the …
Conceptualising Inclusive Innovation: Modifying Systems of Innovation Frameworks to Understand Diffusion of New Technology to Low-Income Consumers
Analyzing policy for inclusive innovation: The mobile sector and base-of-the-pyramid markets in Kenya
Recent interest in inclusive innovation to serve base-of-the-pyramid markets has so far produced relatively little evidence about the role of policy. Drawing on cases from Kenya's mobile phone sector that have successfully scaled innovations to poor consumers, we suggest that policy-making is not only present, but can also have a significant role in shaping and supporting inclusive innovation systems. In these cases, inclusive innovation has been…
New models of inclusive innovation for development
This special issue of Innovation and Development focuses on inclusive innovation; specifically on analysis of the new models of this form of innovation which are emerging. After discussing the growing need for research into those models, this editorial paper interrogates the meaning of 'inclusive innovation' and what it means to understand inclusive innovation in terms of models. The editorial then outlines the contribution of the papers that mak…
Nurturing user–producer interaction: Inclusive Innovation Flows in a Low-Income Mobile Phone Market
Understandings of inclusive innovation in developing country low-income markets have typically taken one of two perspectives. On the one hand, a business perspective on the role of top-down, strategic innovation from larger-firm actors. And on the other hand, a more developmental perspective that highlights the role localized practices play in making new goods and services applicable to local needs. Both are demonstrably important to successful i…
Introduction to the Tsinghua Bamboo-Strip Manuscripts
The Tsinghua University bamboo-strip manuscripts are among the most extraordinary collections of ancient texts discovered in China to date. In Introduction to the Tsinghua Bamboo-Strip Manuscripts, Liu Guozhong, one of the scholars intimately involved in editing the Tsinghua strips, offers a straightforward overview to the complexities inherent in researching this collection. Liu provides an invaluable glimpse into how these artifacts were cleane…
Africa’s information revolution: Technical regimes and production networks in South Africa and Tanzania
James Murphy and Pádraig Carmody’s new book, ‘Africa’s Information Revolution: Technical Regimes and Production Networks in South Africa and Tanzania’ explores the diffusion of information and communications technologies (ICTs) taking place throughout Africa. It does this through an analysis of the expectations following the rapid take-up of ICTs, and through exploring cases of ICT use in small and medium enterprises in two countries (the tourism…
A Quantitative Approach to Innovation in Agricultural Value Chains: Evidence from Kenyan Horticulture
Reconsidering the role of the digital in global production networks
Global production networks (GPNs) have become a key framework in conceptualizing linkages, power and structure in globalized production. However, this framework has been less successful in integrating the influence of digital information and ICTs in production, and this problematic in a world where relationships and power are increasingly mediated by digital information flows and resources. We thus look to adapt the GPN framework to allow more su…
Digital Control in Value Chains: Challenges of Connectivity for East African Firms
In recent years, Internet connectivity has greatly improved across the African continent. This article examines the consequences that this shift has had for East African firms that are part of global value chains (GVCs). Prior work yielded contradictory expectations: firms might benefit from connectivity through increased efficiencies and improved access to markets, although they might also be further marginalized through increasing control of le…
The International Trade Regime and the Quest for Free Digital Trade
The global economy is experiencing the digitalization of production, exchange, and consumption of goods and services. The internet and cross-border data flows are becoming important channels of trade as more products are traded through the web or integrate features that rely on digital connectivity. Reflecting the autonomy states have to enact such policies, national variations in internet governance have expanded over the previous decade, with s…
Latecomer Economies and National Digital Policy: An Industrial Policy Perspective
The global economy is experiencing digital transformation with impacts felt in developing countries. Digital firms and capabilities, however, remain concentrated in advanced economies. These processes indicate an emerging source of global economic inequality and a widening of the technological gap. Recently, there has been a growth in interventionist digital policy in developing and emerging economies but research has so far made a limited analys…
Covid-19 and the case for global development
Research Agendas for the Digital Economy
Datafication, value and power in developing countries: Big data in two Indian public service organizations
Globalisation in reverse? Reconfiguring the geographies of value chains and production networks
Standing at a crossroads, where ongoing ‘slowbalisation’ coincides with new forces such as the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, heightened geopolitical tensions, the emergence of disruptive technologies and the increasing urgency of addressing environmental challenges, many important questions remain unsolved regarding the nature and impact of the current economic globalisation. This special issue on ‘Globalisation in Reverse? Reconfiguring the…
Conceptualizing variety in platform capitalism: The dynamics of variegated capitalism in Thai digital marketplace platforms
Digital platforms are expanding globally with significant implications for how economies operate. We argue that the literature has tended to over-emphasize the globalized and homogeneous impacts of platforms with less analysis of variable patterns across space. To conceptualize variety, the notion of variegated capitalism is examined to provide insights into the nature of platform capitalism. Conceptual discussion is supported by the case of digi…
China’s digital expansion in the Global South: Systematic literature review and future research agenda
At the intersection of China’s growing global presence and growing digital power lies its digital expansion in the low- and middle-income countries of the Global South. Worth billions of US$ annually in trade and investment, and having a significant impact on these countries’ social and economic development, this phenomenon has been relatively ignored by researchers to date. However, it has nonetheless now been sufficiently studied to warrant a s…
China’s digital expansion in the Global South: Special issue introduction
Intellectual property rights and control in the digital economy: Examining the expansion of M-Pesa
The importance of intellectual capital in the digital economy implies an increasingly central role of intellectual property rights (IPR).However, there are concerns that the expansion of intellectual property rights concentrates profits from innovation, creating "intellectual monopolies".This is particularly concerning with respect to strong global regimes of intellectual property that foster economic inequities between the Global South and North…
Economics (19 works) · Political science (16 works) · Business (15 works) · Computer Science (14 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Innovation and Socioeconomic Development (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Economic growth (7 works) · Industrial organization (6 works)