PRINCIPLES OF INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE DURING THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE ECONOMY

The digital economy has been rapidly developing in the recent decades and significantly changed the economic landscape. However, the digital technologies surprisingly have not influenced institutions at the same scale: they are surprisingly resistant at the first glance. The purpose of this article is to study the principles of institutional transformation, to find the mechanism of institutional stability that hinders digital transformations, and to identify realistic scenarios of digital transformation of institutions. Thus, several theoretical approaches to institutional transformation are integrated in this paper, digital transformations are analyzed through that framework, and the different scenarios of institutional transformations in the digital economy are explored. It has been discovered how institutional change is influenced not only by the economic interests, but also by the need to maintain the balance of the institutional system that may hinder the reforms. Thus, digital transformations of institutions occur according to one of four scenarios: stagnation, simulation, a combination of progressive development and sabotage, as well as the collapse of the existing institutional balance followed by a transition to one of the stabler previous solutions.