Coupling

1. Canonical Definition

Coupling is the dependency relationship between meaning systems through which interpretive conditions, constraints, and drift pressure are imported across boundaries. In Meaning System Science, coupling explains why interpretive stability or instability is often co produced at interfaces rather than generated locally within a single system. Coupling can import misaligned promised reference conditions, conflicting signals, pathway discontinuities, and unresolved inconsistencies. These imports shift drift rate and change the proportional stability profile of dependent systems.

This is a structural condition. It is not a statement about intent, morality, intelligence, or education.

2. Featured Lineage

Charles Perrow — Normal Accidents (1984)

Distinguished tight and complex coupling as structural conditions that amplify failure propagation. MSS extends this by treating coupling as a pathway for importing drift pressure and instability.

Karl Weick — “Educational Organizations as Loosely Coupled Systems” (1976)

Described how units can remain partially independent while still influencing outcomes. MSS adapts this by modeling local stability with cross boundary variance under loose coupling.

3. Plainly

Coupling is how one meaning system affects another through dependency. When systems are coupled, contradictions and constraints can cross the boundary, so drift rate can rise locally without local origin.

4. Scientific Role in Meaning System Science

Coupling provides interface logic for multi scale analysis. It explains how instability propagates across dependencies, why local repair fails when drift pressure is imported, and how meaning topology shifts when interface constraints are incompatible.

5. Relationship to the Variables (T, P, C, D, A)

• T: Imported promised reference conditions can conflict across systems, weakening cross boundary reconstructability and correspondence testing.

• P: Competing authority signals and channels can misalign across the interface, producing incompatible interpretations from the same artifact.

• C: Dependency pathways can create discontinuities in ownership, routing, and integration, lowering cross boundary structural continuity.

• D: Unresolved inconsistencies can be imported, raising drift rate locally even when local processes remain stable.

• A: Interface load increases, consuming regulation capacity and reducing correction throughput under time, volume, or uncertainty.

6. Relationship to the Physics of Becoming

L = (T × P × C) / D

Coupling changes L by shifting one or more terms through imported pressures, especially by raising drift rate or weakening stabilizers at the interface.

7. Application in Transformation Science

Transformation Science uses coupling analysis to separate local instability from imported instability, model interface effects on drift rate and legitimacy trends, and identify when reconfiguration must address dependency structure rather than local messaging or incentives.

8. Application in Transformation Management

Practitioners use coupling to declare dependency interfaces, govern boundary definitions and decision rights, and prevent drift import by aligning promised reference conditions, equivalence rules, and correction ownership across systems.

9. Example Failure Modes

• Upstream metric definitions change without propagation rules, importing constraint failure downstream.

• Multiple authorities issue incompatible signals across an interface, lowering alignment across dependent teams.

• Correction ownership is unclear across systems, producing closure failure at the boundary.

• Contradictions recur across handoffs, raising drift rate despite local effort.

10. Canonical Cross References

Meaning-System • Interpretation • Meaning System Science • Physics of Becoming • First Law of Moral Proportion • Truth Fidelity (T) • Signal Alignment (P) • Structural Coherence (C) • Drift (D) • Affective Regulation (A) • Interface • Coupling • Meaning Topology • Drift Catalysts (β₆) • Coherence Regulators (γ₆) • Constraint Failure • Closure Failure • Meaning-System Governance • Transformation Science • Transformation Management • LDP-1.0 • 3E Standard™