Published
Methodology
Mixed methods: 46 semi-structured interviews paired with document analysis across 12 institutions
Co-Authors
Dr. Alina Ferreira
Prof. Michael Osei
Paper Length
32 pages
Cite as
Ellery, J., Ferreira, A., & Osei, M. (2025). Why institutions change slower than their incentives. Journal of Organisational Governance, 18(3), 211–243.
Copy citation
Reform proposals rarely fail on logic. They fail because the incentives that hold the current arrangement in place are never named. This paper traces that gap across public and private institutions, and proposes a diagnostic leaders can apply before committing to change.
Stated priorities and rewarded behaviour
Across twelve institutions we compared what leadership said mattered with what promotion, budget, and recognition actually tracked. In eleven of twelve, the two diverged sharply, and in every case the divergence was visible to staff long before it was visible to executives.
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Institutions do not resist change. They faithfully deliver the behaviour their incentives describe, long after the strategy has moved on.
Where the lag lives
Strategy documents were revised on an eighteen-month cycle. Performance frameworks, reporting lines, and committee mandates were revised on a four-to-seven-year cycle. That gap is the drift, and it is administrative rather than cultural.
Three repairs that held
Institutions that closed the gap did so by retiring measures rather than adding them, moving one senior incentive per year, and publishing the trade-off they had accepted. Each repair was unglamorous, and each outlasted the leader who introduced it.
