Governing Enterprise Coherence: Governance Integration, Organisational Readiness, and Implementation of the Enterprise Coherence Maturity Model

Diagnostic models of organisational alignment create value only when their results change how organisations are governed and how change is sequenced. This paper examines how enterprise coherence, defined as the degree to which an organisation's purpose, priorities, governance, behaviour, and operating model function as one integrated system, can be governed, implemented, and sustained using the Enterprise Coherence Maturity Model (ECMM). It argues that coherence is fundamentally a governance discipline and sets out its implications for board oversight of coherence risk, governance of behavioural alignment, maturity-aligned transformation posture, and accountability for coherence trajectory. The paper shows how coherence assessment can be integrated with corporate governance codes and with strategy, risk, operating-model, transformation, leadership, and ESG governance, and it outlines ten use cases, from board oversight to mergers and crisis management. It then specifies an organisational readiness assessment across five domains with three readiness levels, a four-phase implementation approach with defined roles, risks, and success indicators, practitioner standards and workflow, mechanisms for governing the model itself, and a five-step continuous-improvement cycle. The paper concludes with limitations and directions for empirical research.