Organizations replace accomplished core missions with new tasks to survive.

Evidence

When an organization’s central task is accomplished or not needed, new tasks will be sought and eventually valued— the process of goal succession. The organization’s existing tasks will be defended, but not to the point where the organization itself is endangered. Eventually the organization will incorporate new tasks and goals as its core mission, with resulting changes in policies and practices. — Robert B. McCalla, NATO’s persistence after the cold war, 77

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘goal succession’ — the mechanism by which an organization whose founding task is finished adopts new missions to keep itself alive.
• XREF: Directly feeds the MOC thread on whether a polity whose existential enemy is erased generates a new one to preserve internal unity.
• FICTION: Could seed a fictional state/institution whose charter purpose has lapsed and which must invent new ones.

Related

• Organizations survive by abandoning goals that threaten their existence (similarity 0.86)
• NATO adapts tasks to persist, as organizational resources enable institutional survival. (similarity 0.84)
• Organizations pursue survival through resistance, self-affirmation, and adaptation (similarity 0.83)
• Endangered organizations widen memberships but never cede control of their domains. (similarity 0.80)
• Alliances can persist and expand purposes after their founding enemy disappears (similarity 0.79)
• Organizations deny environmental change to protect their established roles and resources. (similarity 0.79)