TitleBetween a rock and a hard place: Organizational change and performance under conditions of fundamental environmental transformation The ecological argument about the causes and consequences of inertia predicts the behavior of organizational populations. It also has implications for the behavior of individual organizations. If inertia in the features of an organizational form diminishes its failure rate, then inertia or stability in the features of an individual organization diminishes its probability of failure. The opposite of stability is change. Stability in the structure and activities of an individual organization increases both the reliability of its performance (i.e., reduces the variance over time) and its ability to account rationally for its actions, thereby increasing its survival chances. Hence, change in the structure or activities of any organization reduces the reliability of its performance and its accountability, thereby increasing its probability of failure.
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