Early crises may immunize institutions against later rigidity and arrogance.

Evidence

When established routines become counterproductive, they must be adapted. The organizations under study lost their flexibility to do just that. That does not have to be the case: ‘proper’ institutions find a balance between responsiveness and resilience, an ‘institutional fit’ with their environment – think of the U.S. Forest Service, the General Accounting Office or the Federal Bureau of Prisons (Kaufman, 1960; Walker, 1986; Boin, 2001). Too much success, perhaps gained too easily, disturbs this balance. It may well be that crises in the early stages of institutional development help to ‘immunize’ public organizations against rigidity and arrogance – a hypothesis that may inform future research on the topic. — Georg Schreyögg and Jörg Sydow, The Hidden Dynamics of Path Dependence, 314

Categorization

• QUESTION: Testable hypothesis: do organizations that survive early existential shocks adapt better to later environmental change than those that succeeded easily and early?