I think this happens a lot when huge, mature companies are pressured to grow. Management becomes desperate to make the company into something it isn't to stay on top of the earnings treadmill and keep the board/investors happy. At some point it seems it's just about squeezing earnings out of the firm and claiming to be developing a great product and a winning environment while not actually doing that at all. It would be interesting to see how employees view a firm over time during periods of beating earnings expectations and earnings misses.
I don't have any real data on this but I've got a hypothesis that once a firm misses earnings a few times they "get serious", lay people off, and get rid of parts of the culture that made the firm great in an effort to expand margins for shareholders and say, "Look! See? We're getting better!". This really creates a toxic culture that causes a negative feedback loop and makes it even harder to be an innovative firm that grows like shareholders want.
This is probably a huge challenge for firms that do have excess employees, or need to change their employees to pivot strategies, and it would seem to be hard to do this without inducing the aforementioned effects.
I don't have any real data on this but I've got a hypothesis that once a firm misses earnings a few times they "get serious", lay people off, and get rid of parts of the culture that made the firm great in an effort to expand margins for shareholders and say, "Look! See? We're getting better!". This really creates a toxic culture that causes a negative feedback loop and makes it even harder to be an innovative firm that grows like shareholders want.
This is probably a huge challenge for firms that do have excess employees, or need to change their employees to pivot strategies, and it would seem to be hard to do this without inducing the aforementioned effects.