Organizational lock-in embeds preferred patterns even when hierarchy could intervene

Evidence

Organizational settings cannot readily be equated with markets and monopoly. Because of their social character, organizational processes are more complex and ambiguous in nature. They are not likely to amount to a state of full determinacy, which excludes any alternative choices. Rather, self-reinforcing dynamics are expected to bring about a preferred action pattern, which then gets deeply embedded in organizational practice and replicated. Hierarchy provides formal authority and legitimate influence on members’ behavior; orders can potentially stop inefficient replication. On the other hand, fixed and inflexible behavior is a widely recognized feature in the organizational change literature. — Jörg Sydow, Georg Schreyögg, and Jochen Koch, Organizational Path Dependence, 48

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The tension between formal hierarchical authority that could stop replication and the empirical stubbornness of organizational inertia is a genuinely productive paradox — why does command fail at the very thing command is for?
• XREF: Connects to standard organizational-inertia literature (Beer & Nohria, Kaufman) and to path-dependence theory in economic sociology.