ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Project-based organizing is sometimes seen as a panacea against strategic persistence and structural inertia. This paper argues that, due to stable relations and timeworn routines in particular, these persistencies also arise in project organizations, even in project networks and project ecologies, which are often considered even more flexible forms of project-based organizing. Taking the example of the German television industry, the paper shows that some of these persistencies may even amount to path dependencies that are quite contradictory from an economic perspective. While it seems highly efficient to follow and exploit an organizational path chosen, this very path may also lead to a lock-in