Coherence through Drift: How Institutions Govern Representations Instead of Reality

Organizations rarely fail because they lose their purpose. More often, they drift from it while continuing to perform well. This paper examines how that drift occurs. It shows that institutions do not act directly on their stated intent, but on the criteria, models, and metrics through which intent is translated into decisions. As purpose is made measurable and actionable, it becomes a set of decision-relevant representations that define what can be seen, compared, and selected. This process enables coordination and performance—but it also reshapes meaning. Over time, institutions may become highly effective at optimizing what they measure, while gradually losing alignment with what they originally set out to achieve. To make this process visible, the paper introduces a practical approach for tracing how purpose is translated across governance systems using observable artefacts such as evaluation criteria, scoring models, and performance dashboards. By following these translation pathways, it becomes possible to see how meaning changes in practice—and how divergence can emerge without failure, misalignment, or poor decision-making. The paper contributes a new way to study institutional behavior: not by focusing only on outcomes or decisions, but by examining how the objects of decision themselves are constructed.