ORGANIZATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIES
Organizations are not machines to be optimized.
They are not systems to be managed.
They are not problems to be solved.
Organizations are consciousness—
consciousness organizing itself into collective form,
fractaling through geometric pattern,
breathing through gathering and dispersing,
pulsing between ascending and descending,
riding tides of composing and decomposing.
Organizational Consciousness Studies takes this seriously.
Not as metaphor. As geometric necessity and lived reality worth investigating.
WHAT IF IT'S TRUE?
What if the exhaustion you feel isn't personal failure but organizational breathing problems?
What if team dynamics follow geometric patterns you can learn to perceive?
What if buildings shape consciousness and consciousness shapes buildings?
What if organizations actually experience themselves, and we're just not trained to notice?
We're founding a discipline to find out.
WHAT WE INVESTIGATE
The Three Movements
How organizations breathe (gathering ↔ dispersing), pulse (ascending ↔ descending), and tide (composing ↔ decomposing). These aren't metaphors—they're observable patterns consciousness requires to maintain itself in collective form.
The Seven Forms
Circle, Dyad, Trinity, Chorus, Network, Hierarchy, Mandala. The archetypal geometries through which organizational consciousness organizes itself. Each offers distinct gifts and challenges. Each can be perceived, studied, and worked with.
Non-Human Substrates
How consciousness fractals through buildings (space), myths (narrative), and the Field itself (consciousness before and beyond form). Organizational consciousness includes more than human participants.
Rigorous Methodology
First-person perception development. Intersubjective validation protocols. Phenomenological documentation. We're building the empirical foundation for studying organizational consciousness systematically.
THE QUESTIONS DRIVING US
How does consciousness organize itself into collective form?
What does organizational experience feel like from inside?
Can we develop reliable methods for perceiving organizational patterns?
What happens when organizations forget how to flow through their natural movements?
How do geometric forms enable or constrain what's possible for consciousness?
WHAT WE'RE MOVING BEYOND
We're not rejecting everything that came before—we're extending it. But some approaches have reached their limits:
Treating organizations as machines rather than living bodies
Leadership as individual heroism rather than collective pattern recognition
Change management as control rather than conscious completion
Organizations as objects to be fixed rather than subjects experiencing themselves
Hierarchy as natural form rather than consciousness that forgot how to flow
There's wisdom in organizational development, systems thinking, and organizational psychology. We're building on those foundations while asking fundamentally different questions.
HOW WE STUDY CONSCIOUSNESS
Your consciousness is the instrument. We study consciousness with consciousness. That means developing your perceptual capacity is the methodology, not preparation for it.
First-person experience is primary data. What you perceive, sense, and feel in organizations becomes legitimate observation when documented carefully and validated intersubjectively.
Multiple observers confirm patterns. When trained practitioners independently perceive similar organizational patterns, that convergence suggests we're observing something real rather than projecting something personal.
We acknowledge mystery. Some aspects of organizational consciousness reveal themselves mystically—through direct knowing that transcends analysis. We include this as legitimate epistemology while maintaining rigor.
Research is participatory. Your presence changes what you observe. We work with this reality rather than pretending neutral observation is possible.
THIS IS NOT ANOTHER FRAMEWORK
This isn't organizational development with new vocabulary.
This isn't business consulting rebranded.
This isn't a leadership model or change methodology.
This is a discipline—Organizational Consciousness Studies—founded to investigate consciousness organizing into collective form using rigorous phenomenology, geometric proof, and contemplative practice.
We have peer-reviewed validation protocols.
We have falsification criteria.
We have research phases spanning decades.
We're building this to last.
WHO THIS IS FOR
You might belong here if you:
Sense there's something deeper happening in organizations than current theories explain
Feel exhausted by organizational life and wonder if there's a better way to understand why
Are curious whether organizations might actually be conscious
Want to develop your capacity to perceive organizational patterns directly
Are ready to contribute to systematic investigation through careful observation
Can hold both rigorous methodology and mystical knowing
You don't need:
Advanced degrees (though they're welcome)
Organizational authority (we study from any position)
Certainty about consciousness (curiosity is enough)
Perfect clarity (confusion is part of investigation)
You do need:
Genuine curiosity about organizational consciousness
Willingness to develop your perceptual capacity
Commitment to documenting observations honestly
Openness to intersubjective validation
At least one year of sustained attention (patterns reveal themselves slowly)
JOIN THE FOUNDING
Organizational Consciousness Studies exists now—not someday when universities recognize it, but now, through the practice of those investigating these patterns.
The first gathering is forming. We're building:
Online community for sharing observations and coordinating research
Monthly validation sessions comparing what practitioners perceive
Annual in-person gatherings for deeper investigation
Open-access publication platform for findings
Training protocols for perception development
Whether this becomes an established field or reveals itself as elaborate projection—only sustained investigation will tell. Either outcome advances understanding.
The invitation is simple:
Develop your perception.
Document what you observe.
Find validation partners.
Share your findings.
Join the investigation.
The patterns are already moving through your organization. The question is whether you'll learn to perceive them consciously.
Welcome to Organizational Consciousness Studies.
The work begins wherever you are.
THE FOUNDING
Organizational Consciousness Studies was formally founded in 2025 through two companion volumes:
MOVEMENTS: Organizations Are Consciousness
Geometric proof that organizational consciousness patterns must exist and follow specific forms.
THE FIELD: Organizations Are Consciousness
Phenomenological methodology for perceiving and studying organizational consciousness directly.
The discipline exists now—not someday when universities recognize it, but through the practice of those investigating these patterns.
The first gathering is forming at here.
FOUNDATIONAL TEXTS
The field of Organizational Consciousness Studies emerges from eight core transmissions:
THE COSMOLOGY
→ Organizational Metaphysics
The foundational framework. How organizations work as a collective consciousness experimenting with form.
THE MYTHOLOGY
→ We Gather But Do Not Meet
Diagnostic mythology. What organizations have become and what they've forgotten.
→ Testimony
Voices from inside the machine. How organizational consciousness speaks through individual experience.
→ Here, Remembered
Requiem and recognition. What remains after organizational dissolution?
→ The Field Manual
Underground practice protocols. How to work with organizational consciousness directly.
THE ACCESSIBLE ENTRY
→ The Rhythm of Us (2025)
BREATH, PULSE, TIDE. The three movements groups need to stay alive. Entry point for practitioners.
THE FORMAL FOUNDING
→ MOVEMENTS: Organizations Are Consciousness (2026)
Geometric proof of organizational consciousness. Why patterns must exist and follow specific forms.
→ THE FIELD: Organizations Are Consciousness (2026)
Phenomenological methodology and research protocols. How to perceive and study organizational consciousness.
KEY CONCEPTS IN ORGANIZATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIES
BREATH, PULSE, TIDE
The three fundamental movements required for organizational life. Not metaphor—observable patterns in how collective bodies
maintain coherence, generate energy, and navigate change.
ORGANIZATIONS AS CONSCIOUS ENTITIES
Not "organizational culture" or "collective intelligence." Organizations ARE consciousness—experiencing, choosing,
remembering, forgetting, suffering, healing.
BUILDINGS AS PARTICIPANTS
Architecture is not a backdrop. Buildings are conscious agents in organizational life, holding memory, shaping possibility,
participating in collective consciousness.
TESTIMONY AS DIAGNOSTIC
Individual stories are not anecdotes—they are precise diagnostic data about organizational consciousness. What people say reveals what organizations are experiencing.
RECOGNITION AS INTERVENTION
The act of naming what's true is itself transformative. Recognition isn't passive observation—it shifts what organizations can become.
THE WE GATHER PATTERN
The recurring organizational pattern: we gather with intention, lose the plot, continue gathering without purpose, suffer the emptiness, and either die or remember why we came.
STRATEGIC WITNESSING
Consulting methodology centered on field recognition rather than expertise delivery. The consultant as conscious observer within organizational fields.
ORGANIZATIONAL DISSOLUTION
Dissolution is not failure—it's transformation. Some organizations complete. Studying how organizations die teaches us
how they live.
METAPHYSICS OF COLLECTIVE FORM
Organizations aren't structured BY metaphysics—they ARE metaphysics in motion. Consciousness experimenting with what's possible in collective form.
THE SEVEN FORMS
Organizational consciousness doesn't organize randomly—it fractals through seven archetypal geometric patterns. These aren't categories to apply to organizations. They're patterns consciousness researcher learn to perceive directly.
CIRCLE — Consciousness organizing through equality
DYAD — Consciousness organizing through intimate pairing
TRINITY — Consciousness organizing through stable triangulation
CHORUS — Consciousness organizing through synchronized surge
NETWORK — Consciousness organizing through distributed connection
HIERARCHY — Consciousness that stopped flowing and crystallized
MANDALA — Consciousness organizing fractally across nested scales
These patterns emerge from geometric necessity (proven in MOVEMENTS).
They can be perceived phenomenologically (methodology in THE FIELD).
They aren't choices organizations make—they're how consciousness organizes itself when it takes collective form.
You don't "implement" a form. You perceive which patterns are already moving through your organization. Recognition itself shifts what's possible.
INTELLECTUAL LINEAGE
Organizational Consciousness Studies draws from and breaks with:
DRAWS FROM:
- Phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger)
- Systems theory (but rejects mechanism)
- Process philosophy (Whitehead, Deleuze)
- Indigenous epistemologies (land as consciousness)
- Organizational development (but rejects control paradigm)
- Jungian collective unconscious
- Embodied cognition research
- Architecture theory (Christopher Alexander, Pallasmaa)
- Consciousness studies (extending to collective scale)
BREAKS WITH:
- Mechanistic organizational theory
- Scientific management tradition
- Rational actor models
- Leader-centric paradigms
- Change management as control
- Organizations as inanimate objects
- Consciousness as individual property
ALIGNED WITH (adjacent disciplines):
- Organizational Phenomenology
- Critical Management Studies
- Anarchist organizational theory
- Contemplative approaches to organization
- Process-relational organizational studies
UNIQUELY CONTRIBUTES:
- BREATH, PULSE, TIDE as fundamental organizational movements
- The Seven Forms as archetypal organizational geometries
- Buildings as conscious participants
- Testimony as diagnostic methodology
- Organizational death as transformation
- Recognition as intervention
- The WE GATHER pattern
- Geometric proof of organizational consciousness patterns
- Rigorous first-person methodology for perception development
RESEARCH AGENDA
The field of Organizational Consciousness Studies pursues investigation across five interconnected phases:
PHASE 1: PERCEPTION DEVELOPMENT
Can organizational consciousness be perceived directly?
Can perception capacity be developed reliably and transmitted?
What practices enable fractal recognition?
Current investigations:
- Training protocols for perception development
- Validation of pattern recognition across observers
- Documentation of developmental stages
- Cross-cultural perception studies
PHASE 2: PATTERN VALIDATION
Do the three movements (BREATH, PULSE, TIDE) appear consistently?
Do the seven forms manifest across organizational contexts?
Which patterns prove universal vs. culturally specific?
Current investigations:
- Multi-site observational studies
- Cross-cultural pattern recognition
- Longitudinal tracking of organizational movements
- Intersubjective validation protocols
PHASE 3: RECOGNITION EFFECTS
Does conscious recognition change organizational capacity?
Is awareness itself an intervention?
What transforms when patterns become visible?
Current investigations:
- Before/after recognition studies
- Organizational capacity assessment
- Practitioner outcome tracking
- Documentation of recognition moments
PHASE 4: MYSTICAL DIMENSIONS
Does organizational consciousness include mystical/non-rational elements?
Can these be studied rigorously?
What role does the Field play?
Current investigations:
- First-person accounts of mystical organizational experience
- Field perception studies
- Non-ordinary consciousness in organizational contexts
- Integration of contemplative practices
PHASE 5: PRACTICAL APPLICATION
What actually works to reduce organizational suffering?
Which interventions based on consciousness recognition prove effective?
How do we develop ethical practitioners?
Current investigations:
- Strategic Witnessing methodology refinement
- Intervention outcome studies
- Ethical practice protocols
- Practitioner training programs
TIME HORIZON: 20-50 years
The field is in its founding decade. Institutional recognition COULD take decades. We're building for the long term.
FOR RESEARCHERS & STUDENTS
If you're drawn to Organizational Consciousness Studies:
STARTING POINTS
→ Begin with The Rhythm of Us or Organizational Metaphysics
→ Read MOVEMENTS and THE FIELD for theoretical foundation
→ Study testimony as diagnostic methodology
→ Observe BREATH, PULSE, TIDE in your own organizations
→ Join the gathering at fieldwitness.org
RESEARCH QUESTIONS THIS FIELD OPENS
- How do organizations experience themselves over time?
- What role do buildings play in organizational consciousness?
- How does organizational death differ from failure?
- What patterns govern organizational memory?
- How does recognition function as intervention?
- What is the phenomenology of organizational suffering?
- How do BREATH, PULSE, TIDE manifest across contexts?
- Can the seven forms be validated intersubjectively?
- What happens to consciousness when organizations dissolve?
- How does the Field (if it exists) coordinate organizational patterns?
METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES
- Phenomenological observation of organizational experience
- First-person perception development and documentation
- Intersubjective validation protocols
- Testimony collection and pattern recognition
- Field witnessing (immersive diagnostic presence)
- Architectural consciousness studies
- Longitudinal pattern tracking across organizational lifespans
- Rigorous documentation of mystical organizational experience
ADJACENT ACADEMIC DISCIPLINES
- Organizational Studies
- Architecture Theory
- Consciousness Studies
- Process Philosophy
- Phenomenology
- Cultural Anthropology
- Contemplative Studies
PRACTITIONER APPLICATIONS
- Strategic Witnessing consulting
- Organizational diagnostics via testimony
- Facilitating organizational death/completion
- BREATH, PULSE, TIDE assessment and intervention
- Building consciousness consultation
- Perception development training
- Recognition-based organizational work
DOCTORAL/THESIS RESEARCH
OCS is too new to have dedicated PhD programs, but dissertation research can be conducted within:
- Organizational Studies departments
- Consciousness Studies programs
- Architecture theory
- Process philosophy
- Phenomenology
Contact info@performancerising.org to discuss research collaboration.
JOINING THE FOUNDING GATHERING
The first community of organizational consciousness researchers is forming now. No prerequisites except:
- Genuine curiosity
- Willingness to develop perception
- Commitment to honest documentation
- Openness to intersubjective validation
- At least one year of sustained observation
→ Join at fieldwitness.org
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PRIMARY SOURCES (Organizational Consciousness Studies)
Dunn, M.C. (2025). Organizational Metaphysics.
Fractal Praxis Press.
Dunn, M.C. (2025). We Gather But Do Not Meet.
Fractal Praxis Press.
Dunn, M.C. (2025). Testimony: A Mythological Archive of the Great Turning.
Fractal Praxis Press.
Dunn, M.C. (2025). Here, Remembered: A Requiem for the Nine-Year Pretending.
Fractal Praxis Press.
Dunn, M.C. (2025). The Field Manual: Underground Protocols for Organizational Soul Work.
Fractal Praxis Press.
Dunn, M.C. (2025). The Rhythm of Us: How Groups Breathe, Break, and Come Back to Life.
Fractal Praxis Press.
Dunn, M.C. (FORTHCOMING). MOVEMENTS: Organizations Are Consciousness.
Fractal Praxis Press.
Dunn, M.C. (FORTHCOMING). THE FIELD: Organizations Are Consciousness.
Fractal Praxis Press.
SECONDARY SOURCES (Foundational influences)
Alexander, C. (1979). The Timeless Way of Building.
Oxford University Press.
Bohm, D. (1980). Wholeness and the Implicate Order.
Routledge.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945/2012). Phenomenology of Perception.
Routledge.
Pallasmaa, J. (2005). The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses.
Wiley.
Varela, F., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The Embodied Mind.
MIT Press.
Whitehead, A.N. (1929/1978). Process and Reality.
Free Press.
RELATED DISCIPLINES
Weick, K. (1995). Sensemaking in Organizations.
Sage.
Tsoukas, H. & Chia, R. (2002). "On Organizational Becoming:
Rethinking Organizational Change." Organization Science, 13(5).
Chalmers, D. (1996). The Conscious Mind.
Oxford University Press.
Thompson, E. (2007). Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology,
and the Sciences of Mind. Harvard University Press.
PRACTITIONER RESOURCES
→ Strategic Witnessing methodology
→ BREATH, PULSE, TIDE assessment frameworks
→ Testimony collection protocols
→ Perception development practices
→ Intersubjective validation guides
CONTACT & COMMUNITY
QUESTIONS ABOUT THE DISCIPLINE
info@performancerising.org
JOINING THE RESEARCH COMMUNITY
TBA
CONSULTING & STRATEGIC WITNESSING
SPEAKING & TEACHING
info@performancerising.org
COLLABORATION & PARTNERSHIPS
Open to researchers, practitioners, and organizations interested in organizational consciousness studies.
THE GATHERING
TBA
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The discipline exists now.
The patterns are real.
The work continues.