Management and organizational theories are commonly used to design nursing administration studies. This article proposes a nursing theory as a viable alternative and demonstrates its utility in the conduct of nursing administration research. The purpose of the research was to determine the explanatory power of the environmental stimuli of medical condition, nursing condition, nursing intensity, and medical severity on length-of-stay (LOS). Twenty-three percent of the variance in LOS was accounted for by the environmental stimuli with nursing acuity contributing 14%. The focal stimulus, medical condition (diagnosis-related groups), uniquely explained only one percent of the variance. The theory of social organizations as adaptive systems, derived from the Roy adaptation model, provides an attractive nursing framework to guide and design studies that will contribute to nursing administration science and address practical problems confronting nurse administrators.
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