Informing Disciplines
A synthesis, not a replacement.
Organizational reasoning is not built from nothing. It draws on and connects a set of established disciplines — each of which has studied a piece of how institutions perceive, decide, and remember.
The claim of this field is modest in one sense and ambitious in another. Modest, because nearly every idea here has a lineage in an existing discipline. Ambitious, because no single discipline has taken responsibility for the whole: how an organization, as an organization, reasons over time. The work below is to weave these threads into one fabric.
- 01Computation & learning
Artificial Intelligence
Machines that predict, generate, and increasingly reason.
- 02Coordination of work
Management
How organizations set direction and get things done.
- 03Structure & flow
Organizational Design
The architecture of how an institution is put together.
- 04Advantage over time
Strategy
How organizations create and sustain advantage.
- 05Wholes & feedback
Systems Thinking
Understanding behavior through structure and feedback.
- 06States & industry
Industrial Policy
How nations reason about their industrial base.
- 07Judgment & bias
Behavioral Science
How people actually reason and decide.
- 08Memory & know-how
Knowledge Management
How institutions capture and reuse what they know.
- 09Value & incentives
Economics
What becomes scarce, and therefore valuable.
- 10Structure of connection
Network Science
How connection produces capability.