Een gezamenlijke rekening? Over digitale innovatie en samenwerking in een institutional void

The speed and disruptive character of digital innovations affect social structures and practices faster than institutions can keep up with them. This results in an ‘institutional void’, i.e. a gap between the rules and institutions and their ability and the effectiveness of their measures. It also affects the institutional stability that is the basis for the paradigm of collaboration-based types of governance. In this paper, we explore how parties are able to set up collaboration for digital security, which is inherently a topic that transcends organisational boundaries. Yet digital innovations constantly enable new challengers that might not share the same incentives for collaboration. Life in an institutional void is convenient for them and enables new business models. Hence, a key question is whether (institutionalised) collaboration is a sustainable model for addressing shared problems like digital security. We explore this question in the domain of financial cyber fraud. The new (regulatory) space currently being created for innovators suggests that the answer is ‘no’. It is too early to say how this will play out specifically and we argue for further research into the antecedents for collaboration in institutional voids.