6.3 Insularity

In some cases there is group think or simply a culture that does not encourage the challenging of an organisation’s currently successful actions. This has been widely accepted as the root cause of the problems experienced by IBM during the 1990s when its management failed to respond to changes in the computer market.

In summary then, we might accurately describe how the trajectories of organisations (and in turn their capabilities) can lead from success to failure as a problem rooted in finding a good thing to do but then continuing to do it in spite of the situation changing. Or to put it even more succinctly, doing the wrong thing well (Miller, 1990).

Figure 4 An example of a technology that eventually became a core rigidity in many organisations: the mainframe computer.

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The image shows a photo of a mainframe computer from the 1970s. It is a big room containing many boxes in a row, each with two reels of tapes attached. In front of these is a terminal, where an engineer is sat working. A second engineer is working with one of the tape reels.

Figure 4 An example of a technology that eventually became a core rigidity in many organisations: the mainframe computer.