The Margin of Purpose: How Institutions Lose What They Claim to Value

This paper examines how institutions gradually lose alignment with their declared purpose through the reclassification of protective margins as inefficiencies. It shows how optimisation pressures reshape value interpretations over time, leading to the erosion of safeguards that originally supported long-term intent. The paper highlights how these shifts occur within governance systems without explicit strategic change. It contributes a conceptual analysis of how institutional priorities are transformed under sustained optimisation. This paper is part of the Coherence Programme. Further materials and companion papers are available at: https://thecoherenceprogramme.org/