The Margin of Purpose: How Institutions Lose What They Claim to Value

This paper introduces the concept of the margin of purpose to explain how institutions gradually lose alignment with what they explicitly claim to value. It examines how purpose is translated into decision criteria and how elements that are difficult to formalize are progressively excluded. The paper shows that this loss is not abrupt but accumulates at the margins of decision systems, where qualitative aspects of intent fail to be represented. Over time, these omissions reshape institutional priorities and outcomes. The paper argues that preserving coherence requires explicit attention to what is left out of formal representations. It contributes to the Coherence Programme by extending the analysis of translation dynamics to include systematic exclusion.