[Viability of a proposal of change for the continuous improvement of a complex organization: the nursing department].

The nursing department is a complex organization, or a social system, made up of two or more groups interconnected through a complex net of social relations, common values and goals, used as the context for nursing interventions. The complex organization embodies type, subsystems, limitations, philosophy, life styles and process of adaptation to the environment, integration of subsystems, decision making, information processing, communications, coalition-formation and commitment. Theoretical interchange proposal to achieve full quality parameters is based on the seven stages of Lippit's exchange theory.