the.com/institutional drift
how organizations quietly stop doing their job while insisting nothing has changed.
means the gradual, unplanned shift of an institution's actual purpose and behavior away from its stated mission, usually without anyone deciding it should happen.
from rooted in institutional economics and organizational sociology, where scholars noticed that rules and norms erode through countless small adaptations rather than dramatic reversals — the institution survives, but what it does no longer matches what it says.
no villain requiredhappens through incentives, not conspiracies
slow by designeach step looks reasonable in isolation
mission statements lagthe charter often outlives the actual practice
studied in economicskey concept in douglass north's institutional theory