To Örebro University

A key challenge for implementing pioneering regulatory and technological 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 multiple levels of inquiry. To do this I studied the case of pioneering technological 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 asking (1) what the conditions enabling pioneering change in the financial exchanges sector are and (2) why the actors in and around the Swedish financial exchanges were able to enact pioneering technological and regulatory 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 relational database and analyzed the data using a mix of methods from business 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 conditions and the agency of the key change agents present at the two financial exchanges, that is, SSE and OM respectively. As such, the dissertation emphasizes multiple perspectives from which the change needs to be understood. The dissertation contributes to extant literature by (1) highlighting the role of cities in providing enabling conditions for digital and institutional entrepreneurship, (2) emphasizing the role of peer interaction in pioneering changes in organizational forms, and (3) introducing the role of joint commitments in achieving a favorable social evaluation. The dissertation further recommends that innovative policymakers help others in favor of change to deal with resourceful vested interest groups.