Testing environmental change´s effects of EU´s general data protection regulation (GDPR) on the software industry

The a disruption caused on economic systems by the advent of the GDPR constituted per se a phenomenon of great interest for the research surrounding the Strategic Management domain, especially on business environments and change management, as this legal framework shaped the uprising of digital technologies, big data ecosystems, artificial intelligence and, the connectivity of societal agents (known as the internet of things) with effects on the overall social regime. Hence, the GDPR constitutes an unparalleled event regarding environmental change and organizational response to it, which opened avenues for research, among others, regarding strategic flexibility, drift, adaptation, business development, and/or opportunity exploring. This research focused on testing the impact on the GDPR on organizational adaptation (structure configurations) and business adaptation (goal setting and planning´s change), therefore, testing it on a technology-based sector, assumedly with a significant degree awareness towards the impact of such changes. An exploratory case research targeted the Danish SMEs of the sector and instrumentalized a content analysis (CA) method. Results uncovered a double loop of effects on the business ecosystem, as to the strategic partial renewal and business evolvement