Sunk costs and commitments to workers make reversing a bad program politically impossible.

Evidence

The electricity program began to lead a life of its own. The TVA could easily take the step from building hydroelectric facilities to building steam plants. After all, the TVA’s own engineers and construction workers were ready to go to work – and who would want them to lose their jobs? The TVA’s board later argued likewise regarding the construction of nuclear plants, even though nuclear technology proved to be much more difficult (Hargrove, 1994, p. 126). Yet when the TVA board realized it had been overambitious, sunken costs and commitments to workers made reversal of earlier decisions politically infeasible (Hargrove, 1994, pp. 244–245). — Georg Schreyögg and Jörg Sydow, The Hidden Dynamics of Path Dependence, 279

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the social-capital thread: commitments to workers function as a bond that constrains later institutional choice.
• SEED: Angle: ‘The program that led a life of its own’ — how agencies become captive to their own employees and past capital.