Interlocking routines make organizations progressively locked into dominant activity patterns

Evidence

In complementary settings, selfreinforcing processes occur when routines and/or practices are interconnected in such a way that it becomes ever more attractive to exploit the synergies or—when referring to the reverse side—to save misfit costs caused by solutions deviating from the established cluster/ organizational capability. As a result, distinct sets of activity patterns become progressively dominant (Leonard-Barton, 1995) and, additionally, deeply embedded in an organization (“deep structure”)—that is, they become organizationally path dependent. — Jörg Sydow, Georg Schreyögg, and Jochen Koch, Organizational Path Dependence, 83

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to path dependence and lock-in arguments in economics of technology and QWERTY-style cases.