The mechanisms that institutionalize an organization also cause its eventual decline.

Evidence

Path dependence theory holds that the mechanisms that bring performance stability and external support, ‘lock-in’ further organizational development. It suggests that the roots of institutionalization can put an organization on a trajectory from which deviation becomes increasingly difficult over time. Path dependence may thus account for the organization’s lack of adaptive capacity. The very path-dependent mechanisms that help an organization institutionalize in its early years may bring about its institutional demise years down the road. — Georg Schreyögg and Jörg Sydow, The Hidden Dynamics of Path Dependence, 251

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The identity of the stabilizing and the fatal mechanism dissolves the usual success/failure dichotomy in institutional analysis.
• SEED: Possible essay: ‘Success Is the Wound’ — reading institutional decline as encoded in the founding act rather than in later misjudgment.