Systems counteract disturbances—institutions resist change.
Borrowed from chemistry, and the borrowing is metaphor rather than derivation. The institutional observation it names is real; the chemical law provides no warrant for it.
In practice
- A tax on one form of income raises receipts for a year, and the income reappears in a form the tax does not name.
- A department reorganised to reduce a bottleneck finds the bottleneck reappearing at the next stage within two quarters, which the analogy names and does not explain.
- Standing
- Borrowed from chemistry; the social reading is metaphor, not derivation.
- Subject
- Design & Systems
- Essay
- Rules of thumb for building things that work