ABSTRACT
One of the important implications of accepting organizational models based upon open-system concepts is that open systems live by the exchange of materials with their environment and have the capacity to reach a time-independent steady state. That is to say, the system itself exerts forces towards the creation and maintenance of fixed relations between its elements in spite of variations in the rate of exchange with the environment. The pattern is that of organic metabolism: increase in the rate of import is followed either by adaptation and increase in the rate of export or by resistance to imports. Once the steady state is disturbed for any reason, external or internal, the system will exert forces to restore it.
