Firm-specific routines, not external conditions, determine which path an organization locks into.

Evidence

For Toyota, the most relevant initial conditions are not the often-cited external conditions relating to demand and resources, but rather its specific metaroutine of ‘self-testing and adapting’ developed over a long period of time by Sakichi Toyoda, active as an inventor and entrepreneur in the textile machinery industry between 1895 and 1930, before Toyota was actually founded by his son Kiichiro in 1937. The metaroutine has committed Toyota to its typical production system despite changing conditions. Toyota’s main Japanese rival Nissan, facing the same circumstances, chose a different route from the 1930s onwards. — Georg Schreyögg and Jörg Sydow, The Hidden Dynamics of Path Dependence, 170

Categorization

• SEED: An essay arguing that comparative case studies (Toyota vs. Nissan under identical conditions) reveal the real causal variable of organizational divergence.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s accumulated work on path dependence in institutions (Champagne Fairs, diamond trade reputation regimes): shared conditions plus a selection mechanism determining divergent equilibria.