This level of rigidity would preclude the gradual adoption of newer workflows, and hence be a hard blocker preventing any improvement or advancement.

I hesitate to criticise it, but I don't think such an environment would be polished. A frozen environment is one which can't be improved, so will naturally stagnate. You couldn't achieve a state of being "extremely polished" because those who cared to do the polishing would be denied the ability to do so because it requires change in order to do so.