Governance Structure

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What Governance Does
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Governance is the control mechanism that sustains a living system's life, by performing three control functions: adaptation, operation, and execution.
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Adaptation:	Recognize new conditions in the external environment that present threats or opportunities for the living system and/or its components, and initiate appropriate responses.
Operation:	Conduct routine functional activities that are necessary for the health and wellbeing of the living system and its component living systems. Mediate conflicting requirements through homeostatic functional adjustment at the living system level.
Execution:	Interpret functional operations in terms of required organization unit and collective component actions.

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From a conceptual functional view, governance orchestrates actions by the other subsystems to perform the life functions that allow the living system to interact with its environment, meet its needs, and maintain homeostatic equilibrium. From a physical view, however, it is the internal organizations that implement governance direction to harness and organize component living systems into collectively performing the necessary work.
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Governance translates the living system's functional requirements into organization unit actions. It motivates the organizations to harness specialized components to collectively perform the higher-level living system's life functions. In this regard, governance operates across all three levels of living system:
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•	Superorganism Governance works through its organizations to direct and the regulate physical actions of its organisms. .
•	Organism Governance works through its organs to direct and regulate the physical actions of its cells. .
•	Cell Governance works through its organelles to direct and regulate the physical actions of its biomolecules.

Governance has Three Units
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At each level of living system, governance can be viewed as a three-tiered structure, consisting of Director, Administrator, and Implementor. Each tier performs two roles. The first role is externally-driven, while the second role is internally-driven.
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Director
Role	Purpose
Adapt:	Adapt the overall living system to its changing environment. Focus on the big picture and anticipate future opportunities and threats.
Decide:	Make decisions that determine how the living system will respond to new or future situations in the external environment and conditions in the internal environment.

How to Respond to New
Situation or Condition

Alert to New
Situation or Condition

Administrator
Role	Purpose
Operate:	Identify and schedule scenarios as required to carry out life function requirements under current situations and conditions. Apply established scenarios as needed, and alert Director to new scenario requirements.
Regulate:	Initiate corrective scenarios as necessary to maintain overall homeostatic order across the entire set of living system functional actions.

Functional Actions
to be Taken

Perception of Resulting
Situations and Conditions

Implementor
Role	Purpose
Execute:	Translate living system functional action requirements from Administrator into physical organization unit and component actions.
Perceive:	Assemble sensory perceptions of current situations and conditions, and provide feedback to Administrator on the functional results of actions.

Organization Unit Actions
to be Taken

Current Sensory Patterns
from Sensory Units

How Governance Works
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Governance deals with information. It acquires and remembers information about the living system's interactions with the external environment, its current physical situation, and the state of its internal needs. Memories of these actions are stored in the form of action-perception-action scenarios.
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Governance interprets perceived information in terms of current operations, the overall health and well-being of the living system, and the collective health of its component living systems. Based on this information, it initiates action to avoid threats and to take advantage of opportunities in its external environment, and sustains the overall homeostatic balance of its internal functional conditions.

Internal Model shows how governance control information is housed in an internal representation of the living system's world.