Implementing Electronic Trading at the New York Stock Exchange: A Case of Organizational Change

摘要

Over the course of the last few years, the New York Stock Exchange quickly changed its trading mechanisms from floor-based to mainly electronic trading. Researchers did not expect this change to happen because they assumed the organization to be too inert. Organization theory also has different views about the adaptability of organizations to change and about the question whether the organizational management of the environment is the trigger for change. In order to investigate this question this paper analyzes the New York Stock Exchange's move towards electronic trading from a rational adaptation view, from a perspective that takes endogenous feedback mechanisms of culture and resistance into consideration, and from the perspectives of management inertia and management choice. It becomes obvious that only the combination of perspectives is able to create the observed behavior, but that different trajectories according to other organization theories would also have been possible.