Organisational Dependency is a relationship in which one form of organisation establishes conditions required for another form of organisation to emerge, operate, persist, or become intelligible.
The relationship concerns organisation rather than isolated components. A later phenomenon depends not merely upon the presence of earlier elements but upon an organisation already capable of supporting what follows.
Organisational dependency should not be confused with causation, temporal succession, correlation, or logical implication. A dependency claim identifies an organisational requirement rather than a simple causal sequence. The earlier organisation establishes conditions of possibility for the later organisation without necessarily constituting it or mechanically producing it.
Within APS, all pathway arrows ultimately express claims of organisational dependency. Architectural Dependency is the methodological framework through which such relationships are identified, evaluated, challenged, and revised.