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This paper reports the findings of a longitudinal case study that traces the emergence and gradual perpetuation of the long working hours regime of an elite management consulting firm over a period of thirty-two years. Whereas extant research has highlighted the need for changing culturally embedded patterns of extraordinary long and inflexible hours, it has not sufficiently illuminated why, despite the numerous organizationally supported change efforts, consulting firms’ working time regimes remain ultra-stable. What are the hidden barriers behind this surprising persistence? Drawing on the theory of organizational path dependence, this paper suggests that in order to understand how to change a working time regime, one first needs to examine in more detail the drivers of its ongoing persistence. In particular, we identify two self-reinforcing dynamics that have driven the formation and continuous stabilization of …