Constitutive Dependency is a form of organisational dependency in which the later phenomenon exists partly through organisational structures already present in the earlier phenomenon.
In a constitutive dependency, the earlier organisation does not merely enable what follows. The later phenomenon exists through organisational features already present within the earlier organisation.
Within APS, the relationship between Life and Biological Agency illustrates constitutive dependency. Biological Agency is understood as the present-tense activity through which living organisation is enacted and sustained. Agency therefore depends upon life as an activity of living organisation rather than as an independently existing phenomenon.
Constitutive dependencies represent particularly close organisational relationships because the later organisation remains inseparable from organisational structures already present in the earlier one.