The Universal & Atomic Elements of Organization
A falsifiable scientific theory proposing that the same irreducible structures organize both thought and reality — from the quantum to the social scale.
O-Theory proposes that four irreducible structures — Distinctions, Systems, Relationships and Perspectives (DSRP) — form the universal grammar of organization. Rather than being merely useful ways of thinking, these structures are hypothesized to be the atomic elements from which every organized phenomenon emerges, whether in cognition, biology, physics, mathematics, society, or the cosmos.
| D | S | R | P |
| Distinctions | Systems | Relationships | Perspectives |
| Identity ↔ Other | Part ↔ Whole | Action ↔ Reaction | Point ↔ View |
| D := (i ↔ o) | S := (p ↔ w) | R := (a ↔ r) | P := (ṗ ↔ v) |
This is a living scientific evidence compendium: an open, continually evolving collection of independent empirical research, formal theory, mathematical proofs, cross-disciplinary analyses, applications, critiques, and proposed falsifications. Every entry is included because it supports, refines, challenges, or attempts to falsify the theory.
Scientific theories are strengthened not only by evidence that confirms their predictions, but also by surviving attempts to falsify them. This compendium brings both together: independent evidence from researchers who were not testing DSRP and proposed counterexamples evaluated against the formal theory.
One counterexample is enough to falsify O-Theory. Until then, the question remains: do the same four structures organize everything from quantum systems to human thought?
Independent convergence is one of the strongest forms of scientific evidence because researchers arrive at the same conclusion while investigating different questions for different reasons.
The number is not the point. Researchers in different fields, studying different questions with different methods, repeatedly arrived at the same structural predictions—almost always without testing DSRP or using its language.
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This compendium began as the peer-reviewed literature review “A Literature Review of the Universal and Atomic Elements of Complex Cognition,” published in the Journal of Systems Thinking with 109 studies. That paper is the peer-reviewed foundation. What you see here is its living, continuously updated version . New studies are checked before they are added, and the collection now holds and keeps growing. Open any card to see what the researchers found, why it bears on DSRP, and where the original review discusses it, the fuller account.
The collection is updated continuously, so the citation carries the date you consulted it rather than a study count — the count changes weekly, and putting it in the reference would make the same collection look like a different work to everyone who cites it. To cite a single claim or study, use its own address: every one has a permanent link.
This is the adversarial half of the compendium. Where the evidence track asks what converges on DSRP, this one asks what would end it: a single organized phenomenon whose structure needs a fifth pattern, a ninth element, or a fifth structural dynamic. It holds written up from candidates across territories, and resolutions — the general answers those cases settle against. Every case is published whether it held or failed, including the ones still open.
Cite this rather than the evidence collection when the point is what survived attack. The two are separate works with separate addresses: one asks what converges on the theory, the other asks what would end it, and a reference to the first does not support a claim about the second. Case and resolution numbers change when the record is revised, so cite a case by its own permanent link rather than by number.
This collection is meant to keep growing. Send us a study, paper, book or critique that bears on DSRP, whether it supports the theory or cuts against it, and we will read it and decide whether it belongs.
Authors Gjorgjievski, Ivan and Galovska, Biljana and Grujoski, Filip
Year 2024
Publisher XX International May Conference on Strategic Management, IMCSM24 Proceedings, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 310-317
Kind of work proceedings
Discipline Business & Management
Secondary disciplines Psychology
Kind of engagement scholarly
Applied false
Read it at the publisher 10.5937/IMCSM24031G
To argue that cross-functional teams are a key pillar in developing systems thinking capacity in micro, small, and medium-sized organizations, and to situate that argument against the VUCA environment using DSRP as the organizing framework for team competences.
A survey of 169 managers and employees in North Macedonia, conducted October to December 2023, rating twenty-four scenarios on a five-point scale, grouped into six scenarios for each of the four patterns.
A narrative conceptual literature review combined with descriptive statistics from the authors' own survey. The argument moves from a definition of systems thinking, through a definition of cross-functional teams that includes a critique of team overuse, to the VUCA environment, and then into four sections organized by pattern, each carrying its own survey table. No inferential test is performed.
The authors conclude that cross-functional teams are a key pillar in the development of systems thinking capacity, on the grounds that they encourage collaboration, meta-communication, innovation, and holistic problem-solving, and that their adaptability also helps organizations respond to VUCA conditions. In the survey, distinction scenarios drew the highest share of extremely easy ratings at 61.1 percent on average and the authors read distinction as the workforce's most developed competence; systems averaged 46.2 percent, relations 42.9 percent, and the perspectives block 33.7 percent. Within perspectives, 59.2 percent found it extremely easy to see a situation from multiple viewpoints while 23.1 percent found it extremely easy to change a decision on the strength of those viewpoints. The authors single out the pay-to-work and informal-relationship items under relations for further research and propose cross-functional teams as the remedy for the weaknesses the survey exposes.
Three researchers at Business Academy Smilevski in North Macedonia survey 169 managers and employees using six scenarios for each of the four patterns, then argue from the pattern-by-pattern results that cross-functional teams are how a small organization builds systems thinking capacity.
The paper is explicit about where its framework comes from, naming the DSRP model developed by the Cabrera Lab as the structure for the team competences it examines and describing the work as heavily influenced by Derek Cabrera. DSRP is also the paper's keyword. What makes the engagement unusual is the unit of analysis. Most DSRP measurement work scores an individual on a task; here the four patterns are turned into a workforce instrument, with six workplace scenarios per pattern rated on a five-point ease scale by 169 managers and employees across Macedonian organizations, and the paper's body is then organized into four sections, one per pattern, each reporting its own table. The results are read as a profile rather than a score. Distinction comes out strongest, at 61.1 percent of ratings in the extremely easy band, though the weakest item inside it, using specific details when describing an idea, sits at 45.6 percent. Systems at 46.2 percent and relations at 42.9 percent follow, with the relations block showing the flattest distribution and the authors flagging two items, linking pay to work and informal relationships, as needing further study. Perspectives produces the paper's sharpest observation: a majority find it easy to see a situation through more than one set of eyes, and under a quarter find it easy to change a decision as a result, which the authors describe as a gap between believing in multiple perspectives and being willing to act on them. The surrounding argument draws on Cabrera on wicked problems and organizational learning, and on the LAMO model, Linear Anthropocentric Mechanistic Ordered, which the paper uses to set a multivalent world against the mental habits organizations bring to it. The conclusion is that cross-functional teams, by composition, force the distinctions, part-whole framings, relationships, and perspectives that the survey finds thinly distributed.
The paper gets the central thing right: it treats the four patterns as separable competences that can be unevenly distributed in the same population, and it reports them separately rather than averaging them into one systems-thinking figure. That is what lets its most interesting result appear at all. The perspectives gap, where 59.2 percent find multiple viewpoints easy to adopt and 23.1 percent find them easy to act on, distinguishes recognizing a perspective from taking one, and it is a finding about the P pattern that the survey literature on systems thinking does not usually isolate. The instrument itself is where the paper is weakest, and the weakness is not DSRP's. No reliability statistic is reported for the twenty-four scenarios, nothing is tested inferentially, and self-rated ease of a described scenario is a report about confidence as much as about capacity, so the ordering of the four patterns should be read as suggestive rather than established. Two errors should be corrected before the figures are reused: the perspectives section cites the 2.1 to 2.6 average as its own when those scenarios belong to the distinctions block, and the text gives 16.1 percent for scenario 1.5 where the table gives 16.6 percent. The paper also renames Relationships as Relations throughout, which is harmless here but makes the section hard to match against the literature.
Patterns it shows D, S, R, P
Added 2026-10-26
How to cite this Gjorgjievski, Ivan and Galovska, Biljana and Grujoski, Filip (2024). Cross functional teams: A key for improving systems thinking in an organization. XX International May Conference on Strategic Management, IMCSM24 Proceedings, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 310-317.