Rethinking Coordination <br> Foundations for a Multi-Level Theory <br> of <br> Interpretive Alignment and Coordination Fail

Coordination is often treated as a problem of information—its availability, transmission, and processing. <br> However, in practice, coordination failures persist even in environments where information is abundant, <br> systems are well designed, and communication channels are fully established. This suggests that the core <br> issue is not the absence of information, but the absence of shared understanding. <br> Across organisational, economic, and cross-cultural contexts, actors frequently operate on different <br> interpretations of the same inputs. These differences are not always visible. They can exist beneath <br> formal agreement, shared language, or aligned structures, and only become apparent when coordination <br> breaks down. This is particularly evident in environments where multiple cultural, institutional, or <br> disciplinary systems intersect, and where assumptions about meaning are not explicitly examined. <br> This paper develops a conceptual, multi-level explanation of coordination failure based on divergence in <br> meaning rather than deficits in information. Drawing on theories from communication, cognition, <br> semiotics, institutional analysis, economics, strategy, and systems thinking, it identifies a layered <br> structure of failure. Misalignment begins at the level of input selection (what actors attend to), extends to <br> interpretation (how meaning is constructed), and propagates through coordination mechanisms, <br> organisational structures, and system-level interactions over time. <br> A typology of coordination failures is proposed, including pre-interpretive failure, interpretive <br> divergence, salience misalignment, false alignment, equivalence failure, coordination illusion, capability <br> activation failure, boundary failure, legitimacy failure, meaning drift, and emergent system failure. <br> These are not isolated issues, but interconnected mechanisms that reinforce each other across levels. <br> This paper introduces a conceptual multi-level coordination framework that reconceptualises <br> coordination failure as a problem of meaning alignment rather than information deficiency. It <br> contributes (1) a cross-theoretical integration that identifies a shared but unexamined assumption <br> of meaning equivalence across domains, (2) a structured multi-level typology of coordination <br> failure linking divergence across stages of the coordination process, and (3) a causal model <br> explaining how divergence originates, propagates, and becomes reinforced across organisational <br> and system levels. This framework provides a basis for analysing coordination in complex, multiactor environments where shared understanding cannot be assumed, and establishes a <br> foundation for more precise diagnosis and design of coordination mechanisms under conditions <br> of interpretive diversity