p.1116 Organizations can be understood as learning and adapting, as being and becoming. If one takes this view, then change is understood in terms of development and regression, of health and illness, of adaptive and maladaptive processes.

p.1116 A basic issue for any organism and any species is the degree to which it is able to control the conditions of its own existence and well-being. The processes involved may be called adaptive processes. Adaptation is the keynote of living systems. Adaptation is what occurs when the organism comprehends its internal state and the state of the external world in a strategic way. "Strategic" means that the comprehension is in terms that lead to action which ensures the survival, or enhances the well-being, of the comprehending organism.

p.1117 For animals other than man, most new adaptive processes of significance are associated with genetic transformation. In man's case, new adaptive processes can be learned by the individual... the higher animals can, as individuals, learn tricks which are not genetically determined and communicate some of them to their young.

p.117 The simplest, or common sense, image of adaptation is that of the individual finding ways to meet his needs from the external environment: protecting himself from harmful environmental features, consuming desirable features, and altering the environment in ways thtat make it a better source of need satisfaction.

p.1119 Coercion and compromise are the sources of order.

p.1120 In the organization, as in the economy, coercion and compromise are the sources of order. A structure capable of resolving conflicts coercively is established, the pyramid of formal power.

p.1136-1137 The strategies employed by change agents... Typically, the strategy conforms roughly to an action-research model... The first steps are directed to diagnosis of the organization's dynamics... The process of organizational diagnosis provides an opportunity for learning about the dynamics of the system which maintains and is maintained by their customary behavior, and for gaining perspective on it and on themselves. [JLJ - from Wikipedia: Action research challenges traditional social science by moving beyond reflective knowledge created by outside experts sampling variables, to an active moment-to-moment theorizing, data collecting and inquiry occurring in the midst of emergent structure. "Knowledge is always gained through action and for action. From this starting point, to question the validity of social knowledge is to question, not how to develop a reflective science about action, but how to develop genuinely well-informed action - how to conduct an action science" (Torbert 2002). In this sense, performing action research is the same as performing an experiment, thus it is an empirical process.]