Successful Failure

Abstract

Although organization theory has acknowledged low-performance-high-persistence phenomena, the question remains how resources can conceivably be mobilized in favor of permanently failing organizations. This article argues that permanent organizational failure requires those contributing resources to an organization to be interested in both failure and ignorance about failure. Two illustrative examples—help for battered women, employment of the handicapped—are interpreted as cases where “principals” are not necessarily interested in high performance of their “agents” but rather in symbolic problem solving. It is stated, though, that neither the competitive market nor the public sector in a democratic system is likely to provide a favorable environment for such interest. Rather, there is good sense to assume the third (or nonprofit) sector to provide a structural and ideological setting in which both interest in failure and interest in ignorance about failure may be flourishing.