Consensus around the meaning and wo

Consensus around the meaning and worth of organizational practices is essential for maintaining ongoing conformity to institutionalized practices (Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Scott, 1987). A performance crisis tends to erode institutionalized practices and create internal political diseases (Oliver, 1992). This is in part due to the fact that performance crises tend to increase the potential for fragmenting socially shared templates for appropriate organizational activities and to increase internal conflict. In general, performance crises tend to contribute to the deterioration of consensus among organizational members. At the university the performance crisis was occasioned by a perceived haphazard expansion of the campus legacy system voiced by the new technical personnel.