The Organizational Meaning Science™ Institute serves as the research home for a discipline examining how meaning functions as a systemic force within organizations.
The Institute maintains theoretical foundations, research, and scholarly work for Organizational Meaning Science—an interdisciplinary discipline examining how meaning is constructed, disrupted, interpreted, and stabilized within individuals, teams, and organizational systems.
Across leadership, organizational development, psychology, and management studies, meaning is frequently referenced yet rarely examined as a system in its own right. Leaders are encouraged to create purpose, align values, and foster shared understanding, while organizations invest heavily in culture initiatives intended to improve engagement and performance.
Despite this emphasis, meaning itself often remains implicit—treated as an outcome, a byproduct, or a motivational lever rather than as a primary organizing force. This absence has consequences.
When meaning is poorly understood, leaders may mistake surface-level alignment for coherence, misinterpret resistance as defiance, or apply behavioral solutions to interpretive problems. Culture initiatives stall, leadership efforts fragment, and organizations struggle to explain why technically sound strategies fail to take hold.
Organizational Meaning Science addresses this gap by establishing a unifying framework that explains how meaning operates systemically—providing both theoretical rigor and practical application for researchers, leaders, and organizational practitioners.
The Institute's research examines:
While the Institute maintains research and theoretical foundations, Organizational Meaning Science is applied through Noespera Studio—providing meaning-based engagements, strategic advisory, and customized frameworks to organizations navigating complexity, transition, and strategic change.
This separation ensures that research remains rigorous and independent while supporting practitioners and organizations seeking to apply Meaning Science in real-world contexts.
Founder, Organizational Meaning Science
Joan deBien-Trammell is a strategic leadership researcher and the founder of Organizational Meaning Science. Her work translates organizational complexity into durable frameworks, decision architectures, and participatory methodologies grounded in rigorous research and applied across enterprise, nonprofit, and emerging organizational contexts.
Drawing on decades of operational leadership experience—including roles at L'Oréal, Gallup, Pierre Fabre, and Sandoz—and advanced doctoral research in strategic leadership, she established Organizational Meaning Science to address a fundamental gap in how organizations understand and steward meaning as a systemic force.
For research inquiries, collaboration opportunities, or questions about Organizational Meaning Science: