Organizational Representation and Operational Reality in Planned Enterprise Transformation

Planned enterprise transformation requires consequential decisions while operational conditions,
information flows, systems, roles, and measures may themselves be changing. This study
examines the relationship between decision-relevant operational conditions and the
organizational representations available to decision-makers during transformation. The primary
research question asks under what conditions the organizational representation of planned
enterprise transformation available to decision-makers aligns with or diverges from the decision-
relevant operational conditions of the transformation. Using a qualitative longitudinal multiple-
case design, the study reconstructs consequential transformation decision episodes across four
historical enterprise transformation cases. For each episode, the decision-relevant operational
condition (O_t) and the decision-level organizational representation (R_t) are reconstructed
independently and bounded to the pre-decision evidentiary window before correspondence is
assessed. Managerial interpretation, consequential decision, subsequent operational condition,
and changes in organizational observability are analyzed separately. The method preserves
contradictory evidence, rival explanations, ambiguity, and indeterminacy and prohibits later
outcomes from being projected backward into earlier decision states. Across the four qualifying
cases, the correspondence determinations showed substantial alignment at the bounded decision
points, including corrective movement after operational evidence entered the decision process
and progressive construction of representation through investigation, elicitation, verification,
reconciliation, and review. No defensible material-divergence case was identified, and earlier
states lacking sufficient evidence remained unclassified rather than being retrospectively
converted into divergence. The cross-case analysis indicates that correspondence is temporally
dynamic and that representations are constructed rather than merely transmitted. Transformation
activity can also alter organizational observability, most clearly where new investigation,
integration, verification, or structured representation makes previously dispersed or uncertain
conditions more visible to decision-making. The dissertation contributes to a decision-bounded
relational and methodological configuration for studying correspondence between operational
conditions and decision-level organizational representations. It further develops representational
corrective capacity as a candidate construct describing the organizational capacity for new,
contradictory, refined, or previously unrepresented operational evidence to enter a consequential
decision process and modify the representation available to decision-makers. The findings do not
establish that alignment causes transformation success and do not generalize material divergence
beyond the evidence observed. Instead, they provide a controlled framework for investigating
how operational reality becomes represented, revised, and acted upon during enterprise
transformation.