ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the "natural history" or "life cycle" of organizations in general and seeks to apply certain theories and findings of sociologists to health service institutions. Some organizations have normal development while others apparently have arrested development. All are influenced by and have an impact on their environment. The chapter presents four phases of a typical health service organization's natural history and describe these phases in terms of the relative pressures brought to bear in each by the organization's commitment to these two sets of objectives. The four phases are search phase, success phase, bureaucratic phase, succession phase. In search phase of its life cycle an organization is of course young and small, having been created in response to the pressure of social forces. An organization will have worked its way into a favorable position in this distribution by the time it reaches the success phase.
