environment was changing and deserved attention. The
“open-systems” model of organization theory was born.
Thompson (1967, p. 13) stated it well: “The open-system
strategy shifts attention from goal-achievement to survival,
and incorporates uncertainty by recognizing organizational
interdependence with the environmentthe
central problem for complex organizations is one of
coping with uncertainty.” Thompson was prescient.
His words about survival prefigured the emergence of
population ecology and its abiding focus on mortality
and survival (Aldrich 1979, Hannan and Freeman
1977).