The fact that projects running behind are deferred or postponed so often contributes to an air of unreality. Products are announced with great fanfare and dramatically scaled back; initiatives churn on with very little produced in relation to the resources consumed.
Upper management is largely insulated from the rest of the organization, so unless you're middle management, it won't be your job to tell them things are behind, and the process that causes that to happen will remain invisible to you until your project is dramatically scaled back or canceled. (On the other hand, if you are middle management, you're in a dangerous position as the bearer of bad news.)
Although "accountability" is said to be one of the core principles of the company "credo" (basically a statement of corporate values), no one seems to be held accountable for these things. This contributes to the sense that decisions are not made on the merits and upper-management personnel are not evaluated based on job performance. Sometimes, failures are not even acknowledged out loud; success is silently redefined as though the original promise was not made.
This creates a breeding ground for cynicism and a sense that the work doesn't matter that much (or it wouldn't be casually postponed/canceled), so certain personality types don't work very hard here. Other personality types are driven completely nuts by the ever-changing plan, the frequent re-organzations, and/or the opaque decisionmaking process.
