The Coherence Problem: How Institutions Learn, Drift, and Realign

Tagline: Making institutional drift a traceable structural phenomenon. Paper Description: Institutions often appear stable even as their trajectory gradually diverges from declared intent. This paper reframes institutional drift as a structural property of layered institutional decision systems rather than a retrospective diagnosis of failure. It introduces a traceable unit of intent (the semantic anchor) and positions coherence as a problem of temporal visibility—whether shifts in meaning can be observed in decision artefacts before they embed themselves in budgets, infrastructure, and reporting systems. Within the Coherence Programme, the paper establishes the conceptual scope of the research problem and defines the analytical constructs—including Translation Drift, Translation Coherence, and Interpretive Maintenance—used across the series. Programme Description: The Coherence Programme examines how institutional decision systems maintain—or lose—fidelity to declared intent under conditions of complexity, scale, optimization pressure, and delayed feedback. The programme models governance as a translation architecture. Using the Operating Spine, it traces how purpose moves through Capabilities, Value Drivers, Strategy, Portfolio, and Signals, becoming progressively encoded into measurable criteria and allocative rules. At the interfaces between these layers, translation drift, coherence, and corrective intervention can be analyzed structurally. Across its papers, the programme establishes translation traceability as a foundational concern of modern governance. The research applies to public institutions, capital allocation systems, portfolio governance, and AI-mediated decision environments—where the durability of decision rules shapes institutional reliability over time. Programme citation: When referencing the research programme as a whole, please cite the entry paper: Mertens, R. E. U. (2026). The Coherence Programme: A Conceptual Overview and Entry Point to the Research Programme. This paper serves as the conceptual overview and entry point to the programme.Supporting materials and programme documentation are available via the Coherence Programme OSF repository. Programme website: https://thecoherenceprogramme.org Version 1.00: This is the first public release of the programme statement. It defines the conceptual scope, core constructs, and structural framework of the research programme. Empirical studies, measurement instruments, and field applications are currently in preparation and will be released in subsequent linked records.Version 1.01: Minor update: programme structure and linked records updated to include Part 5 (Field Protocol), Epilogue, and Capstone.Version 1.02: Programme Consolidation Update: This version consolidates the manuscript within the unified Coherence Programme structure.Titles, terminology, and internal cross-references have been harmonised across the series to stabilise the programme’s core constructs: Translation Drift (mechanism) Translation Coherence (metric) Interpretive Maintenance (governance function) Distributed Coherence (theoretical integration) No changes have been made to the formal architecture, boundary conditions, methodological logic, or theoretical claims.The update improves cross-paper traceability, indexing consistency, and conceptual coherence across the programme.Version 1.03: Minor structural and readability refinements to the programme statement. No changes to the theoretical framework, constructs, or research design.Version 1.04: Terminology harmonisation and minor structural refinements to improve consistency across the Coherence Programme. No changes to the theoretical framework, constructs, or research design.Version 1.05: Positioning within organisational scholarship clarified and literature references expanded. Minor editorial refinements for clarity and structure. No changes to the theoretical framework, constructs, or research design.Version 1.06: Editorial refinement of the programme statement. Redundant formulations removed, definitional precision improved, and terminology standardised. Clarifications added to translation interfaces and their empirical observability through governance artefacts. No changes to the theoretical framework, constructs, or research design.Version 1.07: Final editorial stabilisation of the programme statement. Minor redundancies removed, phrasing tightened, and internal consistency improved across definitions and sections. Clarifications added to reinforce construct usage and reduce potential interpretive ambiguity. No changes to the theoretical framework, core constructs, empirical strategy, or research design.