Organisational Dependency is a dependency relation in which a phenomenon depends upon the organisation of activities, structures, constraints, or relations rather than upon isolated components alone.
The relevant claim is not merely that certain elements are present, but that their organisation contributes to the existence, operation, maintenance, or explanatory character of the phenomenon under investigation. Depending upon the case, an organisational dependency may be constitutive, enabling, constraint-based, structural, causal, or mixed.
Organisational dependency should therefore not be treated as a single universal relation. Nor should it be inferred merely because a biological explanation concerns organisation. The particular dependency must be specified as a dependency hypothesis, matched to the appropriate evidence, and assessed within its stated scope.
Within APS, some pathway arrows may include organisational dependencies, but not every arrow should be assumed to express the same dependency form. APS pathways may encode causal, constitutive, enabling, constraint-based, structural, spatial, temporal, historical, conceptual, or mixed dependency hypotheses.
Architectural Dependency identifies the dependency commitments represented by APS pathway architecture. The framework-neutral Dependency-Hypothesis Audit is used to determine what kind of dependency is being claimed, what supports it, and whether the claim survives comparison with relevant alternatives and established explanations.