Essays on the interaction between
regulation and technology
av
Rasmus Nils Sture Nykvist
Akademisk avhandling
Avhandling för filosofie doktorsexamen i företagsekonomi, som kommer att försvaras offentligt
fredagen den 26 mars 2021 kl. 13.15, På Zoom från en IT-säkrad hörsal Opponent: professor emeritus Lars Engwall
Uppsala Universitet Uppsala
Örebro universitet Handelshögskolan 701 82 ÖREBRO
Abstract
Rasmus Nykvist (2021): Essays on the interaction between regulation and technology: Understanding agency and context through multiple levels of inquiry. Örebro Studies in Business Dissertations 15.
A key challenge for implementing pioneering regulatory and technolog-ical change includes overcoming regulatory constraints and resistance from vested interest groups in favor of the status quo. This is a compilation dissertation comprising five papers and one covering paper that aims to describe and explain the interaction between agency and context under conditions of combined technological and regulatory change through mul-tiple levels of inquiry. To do this I studied the case of pioneering techno-logical and regulatory changes taking place in and around the Stockholm Stock Exchange (SSE) and Options Mäklarna (OM) between 1978 and 1998. The dissertation explores the dynamics of pioneering change by ask-ing (1) what the conditions enablask-ing pioneerask-ing change in the financial ex-changes sector are and (2) why the actors in and around the Swedish fi-nancial exchanges were able to enact pioneering technological and regula-tory change. To answer these questions I created a data set comprising data from various archives and witness accounts from complementary oral history interviews with key actors. I structured this data set around a rela-tional database and analyzed the data using a mix of methods from busi-ness history and process study methodology from organization studies.
My research indicates that the pioneering regulatory and technological change happened as the result of a combination of several enabling condi-tions and the agency of the key change agents present at the two financial exchanges, that is, SSE and OM respectively. As such, the dissertation em-phasizes multiple perspectives from which the change needs to be under-stood. The dissertation contributes to extant literature by (1) highlighting the role of cities in providing enabling conditions for digital and institu-tional entrepreneurship, (2) emphasizing the role of peer interaction in pi-oneering changes in organizational forms, and (3) introducing the role of joint commitments in achieving a favorable social evaluation. The disser-tation further recommends that innovative policymakers help others in fa-vor of change to deal with resourceful vested interest groups.
Keywords: Institutional Entrepreneurship, Technological Transformation, Regulation, Historical Methods, Stockholm Stock Exchange
Rasmus Nykvist, Department of Business Administration
