Research Programs
The Transformation Management Institute maintains multiple independently governed research programs. Each program defines its own scope, core terms, and publication pathway, and is stewarded as a distinct line of inquiry within the Institute.
Research programs are not collections of papers. They are structured research lines that establish foundational claims, constraints, and standards for analysis. Program outputs are published through the Research Library.
General Theory of Interpretation (GTOI)
The General Theory of Interpretation examines interpretation as a system: how people, institutions, and automated environments determine what is occurring when information is incomplete, mediated, or contested.
This program produces Meaning System Science (MSS), including the Institute’s primary canon, official terminology, applied research, and technical standards for interpretation and meaning-system reliability.
→ View the Canon Overview
→ View the Domain of Interpretation
→ View the Official Terminology
System Existence Theory (SET)
System Existence Theory specifies the conditions under which system is an admissible category of analysis. It addresses a prior question to system modeling and evaluation: when a candidate unit can be coherently treated as a system at a stated boundary.
SET is a foundational research branch of the Institute. It establishes admissibility conditions for systemhood, including systemic separability, continuity, and unit identity. Its definitions are intentionally local to the program and are governed within the SET corpus.
SET does not address behavior, function, optimization, meaning, or interpretation.
→ View the Program Overview
→ View the Theory in Context
