Stubborn Swedes: The persistence of the Swedish corporate governance system under international reform

Despite a number of corporate governance reforms introduced following an Anglo-American blueprint, the Swedish corporate governance system still contains several country-specific traits. In this article, we try to understand this continuity of the national corporate governance system. We do this by outlining a model for describing the processes of change built on Mary Douglas’ (1986) theory of ‘institutional thinking’ and applying this model to a case of the implementation of regulation on independent directors in Sweden. The results highlight (i) that continuity is ensured through the use of ‘sacred objects’ and (ii) that compromises between the old and the new is made possible by the uses of concepts with ‘positive connotations’. Hereby a form of assimilation to the international blueprint occurs which may – or may not – lead to convergence in the long run.