White Paper 4.6 – Core Extension 1.0: Existential Management: Compatibility of Meaning and the Integrative Force of the Organization

Abstract This paper develops an ontological explanation of the conditions under which an organization persists as a unity of decision-making. It builds on the ontological architecture of Existential Management, in which the organization is defined as a unity of decision-making reproduced by the meaning of the organization over time. The paper analyzes the mechanism through which the meaning of the organization is present in decision-making. It shows that the meaning of the organization does not act directly, but through its distribution in the social consciousness of the organization, i.e. through its presence in the decision-making frameworks of collaborators. On this basis, it develops the concept of the distribution of meaning as a condition of its operativity in decision-making. The paper analyzes the compatibility of interpretations of the meaning of the organization with the meaning of the organization as an integrative principle of the unity of decision-making. It shows that the stability of the organization depends on the degree of this compatibility, which enables the reproduction of the meaning of the organization in decision-making. The stabilization of compatibility leads to the emergence of the social consciousness of the organization as a state in which the distribution of meaning is sufficiently coherent to ensure the unity of decision-making. On this basis, integrative force is analyzed as a dynamic structural capacity of the organization to maintain this unity over time. The paper further distinguishes between economic reproduction and ontological reproduction and shows that organizations may persist as economic forms even under conditions of weakened ontological reproduction. Organizational collapse is therefore interpreted as a consequence of the loss of the ability to reproduce the meaning of the organization as an integrative principle of the unity of decision-making. On this basis, the paper formulates the condition of the ontological persistence of the organization derived from the architecture established in White Paper 4.4.