After spending  significant time and building a career as an executive at various companies, I can summarize that for the growth of a company, KARMA matters. What is  KARMA? Is it just a fancy word?  Business KARMA is:

• Knowledge of the core competencies of the business and its competitors. The knowledge of what your customers want,  not just what you want to offer.
• Aversion to risk plays a big role in stunting growth. This also leads to lack of innovation in the organization.
• Repeatedly doing what worked in the past. Many a times management executives want to stay with status quo to protect their job, territory, power or people even though they are well aware that any state is transient state, including ones life on this  planet. Businesses with this culture lose to competitors that create a diverse organization to encourage innovation and challenge the status quo.
• Management’s lack of consensus, arising from the members of the management team who lack the knowledge of the growth areas in which business can grow.
• Arrogance in company culture, typically a result of previous successes. This arrogance leads to providing lip service instead of great customer experience to even some of the most valued and loyal customers.

Examples of corporations or businesses that are showing stunted or declining growth can be found in any business journal or newspaper. If one maps the above characteristics to their culture, one would find at least two or more of these behaviors are easily seen in these companies.