A university I know of brought in a policy of only two terms for postdocs, so regardless of where they were in their research, they either had to become a lecturer or move on.
The reason behind this was to bring new postdocs in. Not to increase the quality of the research, but because it was a very effective way of opening up access to new funding streams.
These funding streams are of course very time limited and commercially driven, so what normally happens is some half assed piece of work is produced, with possibly an attempt to monetised and then more often than not discarded. Actually producing work that furthers an academic field seems to be very much down the list of priorities…