An organizing principle is a core assumption from which everything else by proximity can derive a classification or a value.
It is like a central reference point that allows all other objects to be located, often used in a
conceptual framework.
Having an organizing principle might help one simplify and get a handle on a particularly complicated domain or phenomenon. On the other hand, it might create a deceptive prism that colors one's judgment.
Examples
* In a
Brookings Institution article,
James Steinberg describes how
counter-terrorism has become the organizing principle of U.S. national security.
* The idea of the
Solar System
The Solar System Capitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar ...
is based on the organizing principle that the Sun is located at a central point, and all planets revolve around it.
* Most modern
cities are based on the organizing principle of the
Grid plan
In urban planning, the grid plan, grid street plan, or gridiron plan is a type of city plan in which streets run at right angles to each other, forming a grid.
Two inherent characteristics of the grid plan, frequent intersections and orthogona ...
in order to better manage transportation and
addressing
In computing, an address space defines a range of discrete addresses, each of which may correspond to a network host, peripheral device, disk sector, a computer data storage, memory cell or other logical or physical entity.
For software programs t ...
.
* Most religions can be described by social scientists as built around an organizing principle that allows for the sustainable or improvable
recursion of a unique population.
* Organizations can be constructed around a set of organizing principles, such as concepts, priorities, or goals. For example, an organization may intend to be innovative, international, quality and agile.
* The central organising principle of the
Welsh Government is
sustainability
Specific definitions of sustainability are difficult to agree on and have varied in the literature and over time. The concept of sustainability can be used to guide decisions at the global, national, and individual levels (e.g. sustainable livi ...
.
*
Legitimation code theory
Legitimation or legitimisation is the act of providing legitimacy. Legitimation in the social sciences refers to the process whereby an act, process, or ideology becomes legitimate by its attachment to norms and values within a given society. It ...
is an explanatory framework in the
sociology of knowledge and education that seeks to understand different social fields of practices in terms of their organizing principles, which determines the basis of success and failure.
*The organizing principle of the aphorism "
as above, so below" is based on man's primordial sense of up and down and that this sense is a result of the symmetries in nature.
*
Theism holds that there is a cause for things that are evidently effects or passive to a force or action and that this involves a vital force that produces effects that demonstrate design and concordance.
See also
*
Unit of analysis
The unit of analysis is the entity that frames what is being looked at in a study, or is the entity being studied as a whole. In social science research, at the macro level, the most commonly referenced unit of analysis, considered to be a society ...
*
Concept-driven strategy
*
Frame analysis
Frame analysis (also called framing analysis) is a multi-disciplinary social science research method used to analyze how people understand situations and activities. Frame analysis looks at images, stereotypes, metaphors, actors, messages, and m ...
*
Framing
*
Pragmatism
*
Attractor
References
Principles
Strategy
Concepts
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