Research publications on Organizational Schema Theory (orgschema), a reverse-design TDD methodology for business operations. Businesses are designed backward from desired customer experience through testable, version-controlled specifications where each operational layer validates the layer above it.
Formalizes brand-substrate decoupling as a continuous, logistic-form model governing how brand signal migrates from a founder-bound substrate (Tier 1) to an institutionally separable product-brand substrate (Tier 4) through deliberate knowledge-externalization effort over time. M&A value at exit is derived as a piecewise function of Tier-4 share at deal time, with a separability threshold above which brand assets become acquirable independently of the originating principal. Extends the Tier-Rotation Valuation Dynamics subsection of Zharnikov (2026ah) into a complete continuous model. Five falsifiable propositions; four illustrative boundary objects (Yeezy/Adidas, Casamigos/Diageo, Tom Ford/Estée Lauder, Kongō Gumi).
Keywords: brand assets, founder exit, intangible-asset separability, M&A valuation, organizational architecture, resource separability, tier rotation
- Read on GitHub
- Preprint (DOI)
- Target venue: Academy of Management Review (primary); Strategic Management Journal + Organization Science (alternates)
Formalizes the cross-tier capital allocation problem using a vector w spanning five operating tiers that differ in asset durability. Each tier accumulates stock with tier-specific decay rates calibrated from Belo, Lin, and Vitorino (2014), ranging from .50/year at the organizational surface (Tier 6: advertising, paid media) to .05-.10/year at foundational layers (Tiers 2-3). Long-run value is a discounted Cobb-Douglas aggregator with Jorgensonian user costs; optimizing subject to the per-tier rental-rate budget constraint yields the closed-form rule w_t*(r) = alpha_t / (delta_t + r) and the comparative static d(w_6*)/dr > 0. Four falsifiable propositions link pre-deal surface-tier intensity, governance horizon, cost-of-capital shocks, and capability-rotation stage to M&A outcomes and capability persistence. Companion computation script and Figure 1 contour plot published alongside the paper.
Keywords: capital allocation, dynamic capabilities, brand capital, goodwill impairment, portfolio choice, organizational architecture, tier allocation, intangible capital, resource orchestration, corporate governance
- Read on GitHub
- Preprint (DOI)
- Target venue: Strategic Management Journal (primary); Academy of Management Review and Organization Science (alternates)
Extends the six-tier business architecture from Zharnikov (2026ag) into the brand-portfolio domain. Argues that brand IS Tier 4 — the Product specification surface — projected through an observer perceptual filter into observed brand-perception space. Three downstream phenomena unify under this single structural identity: multi-brand capacity is the firm's tier-level separability profile; failed-brand recovery is tier-level salvage of brand-agnostic infrastructure under brand-bound failure; and marketing, advertising, and branding are Tier-6 organizational functions that create, operate, and retire Tier-4 instances. Seven falsifiable propositions are derived (P1-P7), including the operationalization of the Aaker-Joachimsthaler Brand Relationship Spectrum as a measurable Tier-3-visibility-in-Tier-4 parameter (P7). Two diagnostic instruments — the Multi-Brand Capacity Diagnostic and the Recovery Salvage Matrix — are sketched for empirical validation.
Keywords: brand portfolio architecture, multi-brand strategy, corporate rebranding, brand failure recovery, tier-level decomposition, brand-business separability, marketing organization, cross-brand function
- Read on GitHub
- Preprint (DOI)
- Target venue: Strategic Management Journal or Journal of Marketing
Develops a six-tier ontology of the acquisition target — Owner Intent, Business Model, Business Entity, Product, Process, and Organization — each defined by a unique governor, specification surface, and transferability mode. The tiers form dual overlapping hierarchies (service running upward; constraint running downward) that jointly determine integration sequencing and generate seven falsifiable propositions on cross-tier failure cascades. The framework applies across for-profit, NGO, cooperative, and state-owned organizational forms through explicit substitution rules. The Six-Tier Separability Diagnostic (STSD) profiles each tier as Fused / Partial / Independent for pre-close M&A risk assessment. Bridge contribution: the OST cascade L0-L5 nests inside Tiers 4-6 of the broader six-tier ontology.
Keywords: mergers and acquisitions, organizational ontology, transferability, business model, integration failure, form-invariance, separability diagnostic, dual hierarchy, failure cascade
- Read on GitHub
- Preprint (DOI)
- Target venue: Academy of Management Review
Introduces the orgschema methodology: a six-level TDD cascade (customer experience contracts, signal requirements, process contracts, procedures, input specifications, sourcing requirements) where each level functions as the acceptance test for the level below it. Demonstrated through a complete specialty coffee operation (Spectra Coffee) specified across all six levels. Evaluated by five independent expert reviewers. Discusses implications for franchise models, organizational openness, and cross-industry perception transplant.
Keywords: test-driven development, business design, configuration management, design science research, declarative process management, organizational specification
Provides the first explicit algebraic identification of organizational acceptance testing as a spectral projection operator. Conventional audit (per Power 1997) is shown to be a degenerate rank-1 projection that discards all dimensions of organizational performance orthogonal to the compliance axis; OST's six-level cascade is full-rank, preserving dimensional structure across the specification hierarchy. The paper synthesizes three convergent lineages — organizational cybernetics (Beer 1972; Beer 1984), behavioral organization theory (March and Simon 1958; Argyris and Schön 1978), and software engineering verification (Beck 2002) — and shows that all three implicitly rely on the projection identity without naming it. Three formal propositions establish the rank inequality, cascade-consistency condition, and bandwidth bound. A Python simulation in Appendix B confirms that rank-1 audit misses ~90% of total organizational deviation across all noise levels.
Keywords: organizational verification, spectral projection, acceptance testing, audit society, viable system model, test-driven development, organizational learning, information-processing design
- Read on GitHub
- Preprint (DOI)
- Target venue: Academy of Management Review
Introduces a structured diagnostic protocol that evaluates organizational specification maturity across six cascading levels. Each audit level defines what to examine, what a healthy specification looks like, what failure modes indicate, and what corrective actions restore specification integrity. Demonstrates the full protocol through a worked example using a specialty coffee operation. Advances two propositions: cascade-position prioritization and bidirectional traceability completeness.
Keywords: organizational specification, test-driven business design, operational audit, specification maturity, six-level cascade, experience contracts, organizational schema theory, AI-assisted diagnostics
@article{zharnikov2026ost,
title={The Organizational Schema Theory: Test-Driven Business Design},
author={Zharnikov, Dmitry},
year={2026},
url={https://github.com/spectralbranding/orgschema-papers}
}Machine-readable citation: CITATION.cff
| Repository | Description |
|---|---|
| orgschema-framework | Python validator + JSON Schema for orgschema specifications |
| orgschema-demo | Spectra Coffee reference implementation -- 25 YAML files, CI/CD pipeline |
| sbt-framework | Spectral Brand Theory -- the perception specification language used for L0-L1 |
| sbt-papers | SBT research papers (sibling framework) |
Orgschema is a sibling framework to Spectral Brand Theory (SBT). Both emerge from specification-first epistemology but target different domains:
- SBT models how brands are perceived (observer-dependent, 8 dimensions)
- Orgschema uses SBT as the test specification language for L0-L1 (desired perception determines required signals)
See Zharnikov 2026a for the SBT paper.
Several papers in the sbt-papers repo are cross-cutting methodology pieces that apply equally to SBT, Orgschema, and the broader specification-first research program. They live in sbt-papers for historical reasons (originated there before the orgschema-papers split) but are conceptually shared between the two frameworks:
| Key | Paper | DOI | Relevance to Orgschema |
|---|---|---|---|
| R13 | Paper as Specification: A Machine-Readable Standard for Scientific Claims | 10.5281/zenodo.19210037 | Applies the orgschema test-driven cascade pattern to scientific publishing — papers as testable specifications. |
| R14 | Research as Repository: A Git-Native Protocol for Scientific Knowledge Production | 10.5281/zenodo.19294864 | Extends orgschema's "git as system of record" architecture to scientific knowledge production. |
| 2026l | The Rendering Problem: From Genetic Expression to Brand Perception | 10.5281/zenodo.19064426 | Cross-domain formalization of the specification-rendering gap that orgschema's L1-L5 cascade addresses operationally. |
These papers' Zenodo DOIs and GitHub paths remain in sbt-papers; this repo points to them rather than duplicating.
Dmitry Zharnikov -- dmitry@spectralbranding.com
Creator of Organizational Schema Theory and Spectral Brand Theory. Background in financial systems engineering and applied epistemology.
All papers are released under MIT License. Use, cite, and build upon this work freely with attribution.
"Organizational Schema Theory" and "orgschema" are trademarks of Dmitry Zharnikov. The MIT license applies to the source code and text only and does not grant permission to use the project trademarks.