ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an introduction to the study of organizations as social systems in equilibrium. It focuses particularly on situations in which a government undertakes a new activity rather than upon those in which a new organization unit is created by a regrouping of existing activities. The chapter details organization units of sufficient importance to be the subject of legislative attention—a city recreation department, or the U. S. Bureau of Standards. The nature of the organization that is created, its structure, and the degree to which it is actually adapted to the solution of the problem that called it into existence will vary, depending on the conceptions of its advocates and the environment—physical and social—in which it originates. A narrow interpretation of the powers of the national government prevented Congress from legislating against child labor under either its commerce or its taxing powers.
