Homeostasis describes the tendency of systems β biological, organizational, and social β to resist change and actively work to maintain a state of internal equilibrium. Originally a biological concept (the body's maintenance of stable temperature, blood pH, blood sugar), it has broad applications to understanding why organizations resist change, why habits are hard to break, and why complex systems often return to their prior state after interventions.
Status Quo Bias is a cognitive bias where individuals prefer things to remain the same by doing nothing or sticking with a previously made decision. Formally identified by Samuelson and Zeckhauser in 1988, this mental model explains why we stay in suboptimal jobs, why consumers rarely switch insurance providers, and why organizational change is so difficult. By understanding how Loss Aversion and Sunk Cost Fallacy anchor us to the "current state," decision-makers can design better defaults and incentives to overcome inertia and drive progress.