Towards a Theoretical Framework of Collective Development

Introduction

This analysis deals with the stage-wise development of meaning making for individuals, collectives, and their interrelation. The individual’s development is the main concern in the field of adult development psychology, where stage theories are central. The development of meaning making is the focus of one of the two branches of adult development psychology that takes the entire being, or ego as a whole, as its study object, in contrast to the other branch, which focuses on domain-wise cognitive complexity expressed in skills or behaviors. Collective development has been explored to a significantly lesser extent, likely because approaches that take the collective as the unit of analysis typically fall within the field of sociology, where stage-based approaches have been less prominent. Any endeavor to describe collective development implies several questions and choices to be made. Should the collective be considered as a consequence of the constituent individuals, or should the individuals’ functioning primarily be seen as a consequence of the collectives they are part of? Or may there be other external factors in play? In the following, individual development, according to the field of adult development and with an emphasis on meaning making, will be described. This will be followed by an outline of different approaches to describing stage-wise collective development from similar theoretical backgrounds. These descriptions will then result in several questions that are assessed to be unanswered, at which point the aim and research questions to be addressed will be introduced.

Individual Development According to Developmental Psychology and Adult Development Research

In adult development psychology, which involves the study of the individual’s development, or ontogeny, a central theme is that development takes place in terms of a process of differentiation and integration occurring on several levels (Werner, 1957). In a broader sense, the individual is described as first going from unawareness and embeddedness to an ability to step out of one’s embeddedness and perspective of the world to form a sense of uniqueness and individuality, after which a recognition of the connection to the world is re-established (Cook-Greuter, 2013). This pattern of differentiation and integration is also recognized as taking place between the stages of several theories, for instance, Robert Kegan’s Subject-Object theory (Kegan, 1982), where the subject, in which one is embedded at one stage, can be differentiated and objectified, ‘thrown out,’ and integrated as an object at the next order of consciousness; and the Model of Hierarchical Complexity by Michael Commons and colleagues, where a thesis at one stage is differentiated into several components, along with an antithesis, and then integrated into a synthesis at the following higher stage (Ross, 2008). This dynamic is also observed by Ken Wilber and expressed as ‘transcending and including’ one stage of development as a component into the next, rather than developing from ‘something’ to ‘something else’ (Wilber, 1996).

The field of adult development emerged from developmental psychology, primarily through the work of Jean Piaget, who was the first to systematically investigate children’s cognitive development. Piaget and Bärbel Inhelder (1970) demonstrated that children experience and interpret the world and physical reality differently and conceptualize fundamental properties such as time, space, mass, and volume to varying degrees in terms of perspective taking and complex thinking. One such test was ‘the three-mountain problem,’ in which the children faced a model of three mountains of different sizes and different objects. From their position, the children were asked to identify pictures demonstrating what could be seen from other positions relative to the mountains. At the preoperational stage, typically under six years of age, children failed to imagine the mountains’ appearance from other physical vantage points than their own. Piaget referred to this as egocentric thinking, in which the child assumes that others see and experience the same things the child does. Children evaluated at the following concrete operational stage, around 6 to 11 years of age, could correctly state what was and wasn’t visible for a doll sitting across the table. At Piaget’s final formal operational stage, beginning around the early teens, children or adolescents would draw maps or other abstract representations of the mountains to demonstrate how they would look from any position. Piaget’s notion of stages of cognitive development was accompanied by descriptions of the learning processes that took place within stages (assimilation into an existing structure), as well as between stages (accommodation and the formation of a new, more complex structure), thus demonstrating transformative and dialectical qualities, according to Basseches (1984). Although developmental psychology to a large extent has moved away from stage theories, Piaget’s influence on the research field is hard to overestimate. An overview of critiques and responses to his work is summarized by Lourenço and Machado (1996).

Piaget also investigated development in the social domain and studied how children relate to moral and social interactions (Piaget, 1965). He distinguished between heteronomous morality, in which the child adheres to its own impulses or follows rules and norms imposed from the outside, and autonomous morality, where one formulates a morality by oneself. The shift from heteronomous to autonomous morality, Piaget argued, would occur around age nine or ten while fully leaving the egocentric preoperational stage.

Piaget’s work on cognitive and social development was expanded and differentiated into different directions and into adult life. Lawrence Kohlberg (1979) famously developed his theory of moral development, in which subjects were presented with moral dilemmas and their responses and positions were organized into six stages extending into adult life. Piaget’s and Kohlberg’s combined efforts then diverged into different directions, one focusing on complex thinking in the Model of Hierarchical Complexity (MHC) and another on social perspective taking in the work of Robert Selman (1980). Both of these directions addressed the issue of finding an underlying developmental dimension that was more foundational and basic than moral reasoning. Another argument was made by Kegan, who argued that meaning making was an underlying dimension of development from which a moral stance is a consequence.

The research field of adult development psychology investigated further development in adult life beyond Piaget’s formal logical thought in different directions, commonly referred to as post-formal (Commons & Ross, 2008; Sinnott, 2003) or post-conventional thinking (Cook-Greuter, 1999; Kohlberg, 1979; Pfaffenberger et al., 2011). A common division among the stage-based approaches is between those engaging in the development of the domain of complex thinking (Commons & Ross, 2008; Dawson et al., 2003; Fischer & Bidell, 2006) and the more holistic approaches of investigating meaning making (Kegan, 1982, 1994) and Ego development theory (Loevinger, 1998; O’Fallon et al., 2020). These two directions can be seen as the two main branches of the adult development stage theories.

The two branches built on Piaget’s stage conception, although Ego development theory was to a greater extent influenced by the research of Sigmund Freud and Erik Erikson and was primarily based on empirical and psychometric considerations. They also manifested different ways of addressing critique of Piaget’s stage conception. For instance, the notion of décalage, i.e., when children performed at different stages in different tasks rather than demonstrating a structure d’ensemble, a structure of the whole, was recognized by Piaget but more systematically addressed by MHC by differentiating between orders of hierarchical complexity as content-free ideal forms and stages as the evaluation of individuals’ performance of the tasks at a corresponding order. MHC was developed into a formal theory, currently with 17 analytically derived orders of hierarchical complexity (Commons, 2008; Commons & Kjorlien, 2016) based on three axioms that define the orders and further formalize the conception of hierarchical stages. According to this theory, an individual’s stage of performance can be evaluated by means of a structured test, for instance, the Laundry test, which measures up to the metasystematic order (Commons et al., 2014), or by conducting interviews and evaluating them with the scoring manual (Commons et al., 2005). Stage of development refers to the act of internally organizing information to solve a particular task in a particular domain. This way of measuring development by means of performance of tasks provides a stringent and well-defined operationalization of development that otherwise can remain agnostic about the individual’s inner life. The theory also takes into consideration the amount of support needed to solve the task (Commons & Goodheart, 2008). This takes into consideration some social aspects of learning and problem solving, and although Piaget’s theory as well as adult development in general takes the individual as a study object, social factors are necessary for cognitive development.

A common argument from theorists engaging in complex thinking is that these theories are more foundational and basic than the domain-specific theories, such as Kohlberg’s (Hagström & Stålne, 2015). MHC can be considered basic and general in that it has been applied in domains spanning the inner and social life to the material world of the natural sciences (Stålne et al., 2014). From an MHC perspective, Kohlberg’s model can be understood as describing complex reasoning or performance within the domain of moral dilemmas. It is often argued that this applies to the more holistic theories, as well.

Kegan further developed the view on perspective taking by bridging the social dimension and physical world in his Subject-Object theory (Kegan, 1982, 1994), arguing that perspective taking could be understood as a relation or balance between subject (that which is viewing) and object (that which is being viewed), and that this balance is central to our way of making meaning of the world. Here, he also broadened the scope of meaning making by referencing the Piagetian framework that contains three relationships: a biological one between organism and environment, a psychological one between self and others, and a philosophical one between subject and object (Kegan, 1982).

Another approach that has had a significant influence on the adult development field was Ego development theory, which was developed by Jane Loevinger from a purely psychometric perspective utilizing the Washington University Sentence Completion Test (Hy & Loevinger, 1996), and formulated stages inductively on the clustering of responses, thus refraining from formulating any underlying theory. The ‘ego’ was described as the self’s search for coherence and encompassed dimensions such as perspective taking, context awareness, and complex thinking. Loevinger’s empirical and psychometric approach to ego development was accompanied by skepticism toward any attempt to find an underlying logic to describe the stages. Her work was continued by Susanne Cook-Greuter (1999), who argued for underlying patterns in differentiation and integration between every other stage and introduced illustrations of ways of taking perspectives that underlie stage progression (Cook-Greuter, 2013). Terri O’Fallon and colleagues (Murray & O’Fallon, 2020; O’Fallon et al., 2020) constructed an alternative version of Ego development theory, denoted the Stages theory, where perspective taking was placed at the core in the description of stages of ego development, thus aiming for it to qualify as a hard stage theory, although still with no explicit definition of perspective taking or clear description of what, for instance, a 4^th person perspective is. This has, however, been further investigated by Kristian Stålne (2025), who proposed a theory in which perspective taking can be applied in relation to physical, psychological, and relational domains of reality and develops through five orders, in terms of 1^st to 5^th person perspectives, with a postulated 6^th person perspective, as well. This recent work will be significant for this analysis. Although both the Subject-Object theory and Ego development theory are more inclined to view stages as holistic structures, both approaches consider that we can operate on according to varying developmental logics depending on context, domain, and support, which is demonstrated in the sentence completion test where an individual’s responses to the 18- or 36-word stems typically span several stages.

The two branches can be seen to reflect different understandings and approaches to stage theories, treating them holistically, as with Ego development theory, or as complex thinking applied across different domains. This discussion has also expanded to address how to approach ego development and whether it should be treated holistically as a linear sequence of development or as parallel branches, not only of cognitive complexity across different domains, but also of perspective awareness, self-awareness, meta-awareness, and so on. This discussion was initiated by Thomas Jordan at the 2018 ESRAD conference (European Society for Research in Adult Development, 2018) and further explored in an article (Jordan, 2018) based on observations that people could reach different stages of development in these different dimensions. This position is similar to the one Wilber (2000) proposes in describing development in terms of ‘lines.’ Although the community of adult development researchers is far from reaching any consensus on the nature of development, a proposed way forward presented by Tom Hagström will be discussed later in this article.

Theories of Collective Development

Since Piaget’s research with children, there has been a common underlying hypothesis that there might be a parallel between individual development, ontogeny, and the development of the collective and of the species, phylogeny. This can be understood as a form of recapitulation theory, which in biological development was formulated by Ernest Haeckel (1866) as “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” Before Piaget, this same idea was applied to cognitive development by philosopher Herbert Spencer:

“If there be an order in which the human race has mastered its various kinds of knowledge, there will arise in every child an aptitude to acquire these kinds of knowledge in the same order […] Education is a repetition of civilization in little” (Spencer, 1932, p. 82).

A similar parallel is often drawn when theories or models of collective development are formulated from observations of individuals’ development, or when theories of individual development are applied directly to collectives. Collectives may be instantiated as microsystems (smaller groups or teams), organizations, cultures, or societies.

One such example is Clare Graves’ (2005) theory, named “the emergent, cyclical, double-helix theory of adult biopsychosocial systems development” and later referred to as Spiral Dynamics (Beck et al., 2018; Beck & Cowan, 1996). The theory was based on Graves’ own research, in which college students were asked to write short essays on how a rational human being functioned. The essays were grouped and ordered developmentally by Graves and several colleagues, resulting in an eight-level theory, on the basis of which it was later assumed that “…this same model can be used to describe, explain, and explore a group of individuals organized into a culture” (Graves, 2005, p. 175). Beyond individuals’ development (Christensen, 2015a), the theory has also been applied to describe several collective aspects, such as various social systems (Christensen, 2015b), cultures (Beck & Linscott, 1991), economics (Dawlabani, 2013), leadership and organizational design (Beck & Cowan, 1996), cultures in contemporary settings (Maalouf, 2014; Stålne, 2016b) and historical settings (Graves, 2005).

A theory for collective development, as in the historical development of cultures and societies, was also proposed by Jean Gebser (2020), who took an anthropological perspective on Western civilization in terms of the evolution of consciousness. Gebser outlined different forms of consciousness and how conceptions of time and space have developed throughout history, with traces observable in myths and in the development of language and art. Other stage-wise historical reviews have been made by Lene Andersen (2019) and Hanzi Freinacht (2017), both applying ‘cultural codes’ as underlying logic, although material, psychological, and structural factors are involved as well, resulting in outcomes similar to those of previous work by Graves and Wilber.

Collective development in terms of organizational development or organizational logics has been proposed by Bill Torbert in Managing the Corporate Dream (1987) and Frederic Laloux (2014) in Reinventing Organizations. Torbert drew a parallel between the growth and development of the individual from childhood to adult life by means of stages of Ego development theory or action logics and the stages, or phases, that an organization matures through from its conception as someone’s idea to gathering investments, rendering products, diversifying, testing alternative strategies and structures, and so on. Similarly, Laloux built his model and view of ‘Teal organizations’ from a developmental perspective according to Wilber’s AQAL framework and formulated increasingly complex stages of organizational logic denoted by the colors red, amber, orange, green, and teal. Each new stage brings out three innovations, for instance, wholeness, self-management, and evolutionary purpose at the teal stage, which was the book’s focal point and where the empirical material rested. In both cases, empirical support was limited, as were methods for evaluating the development of organizations in general. This was also concluded by Jimmy Parker (2022), who, in his dissertation, attempted to assess the development of organizational functioning by surveying the employees. However, it turned out to be difficult to differentiate the organization’s development from individual biases since they appeared to project their own assumptions, and thus their own development, on their assessment of the organization. Although there are several understandings and candidates on what should constitute the ‘teal,’ or corresponding level for organizational functioning or culture, there seems to be no consensus around criteria for evaluating the level of collective development (Stålne, 2016a), a conclusion Parker shared:

“This analysis demonstrated a pressing need for assessment innovation in vertical OD. It showed that vertical OD measures are very immature even by modest standards of reliability and validity, lagging far behind those of vertical adult development” (2022, p. 230).

In an organizational context, the development of leadership cultures can be understood as the internal aspect of collective development, whereas the structural aspect described above can be seen as the external one. A leadership culture is, according to proponents from the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), defined in the DAC framework as the interaction between individual and collective leadership beliefs and leadership practices that produces a coherent understanding of direction, alignment, and commitment (Drath, 2007; McGuire & Palus, 2018). The framework describes leadership cultures according to an ontology that doesn’t presume leadership in terms of a leader-follower dyad but rather allows leadership to be exerted either by the individual at the dependent and independent stages or by the collective at the interdependent (or inter-independent) stage. These are argued to correspond to traditional, modern, and post-modern orders of consciousness and thus mirror Kegan’s (1994) three highest orders, as well as to a number of stages of ego development. The interdependent leadership culture is associated with double- and triple-loop learning (Torbert, 2004) and dialectics and dialogue, according to Michael Basseches (1984). Thus, the leadership culture itself is taken “…as a primary unit of human development,” as McGuire and Palus (2018) argue for a relational ontology that is “…relationships all the way down. ‘Human being’ is fundamentally a plural and social verb.” This highlights some of the previous theories’ approaches to cultural development as only viewing how the individuals understand and engage in the collective, rather than describing the meaning making and behavior of the collective. This, however, is also the case with the DAC framework, although it applies a collective ontology and explicitly formulates interdependent leadership as collective.

This general approach by Graves, Beck, and others was also employed by Wilber (1996, 2007) through Integral Theory and AQAL, arguing for a measure of “…development in general…” (2007, p. 67) and the notion of ‘altitude’ as “…degree of development” (2007, p. 35). These levels or degrees have been described with colors according to a spectrum and applied to the inner and outer, individual and collective aspects of development. Integral Theory has been applied in numerous areas that may be considered collective development, such as economy, politics, business, ecology, and sustainability, to mention a few. Although there are some examples of relating societal development to individual meaning making—for instance, in terms of the mental demands of modern life as described in In Over Our Heads (Kegan, 1994), cognitive complexity appropriate to a certain societal functioning (Freinacht, 2019), or development in a broader sense in Wilber’s AQAL framework—it is here argued that there are still no systematic approaches to how the development of the collective can be deduced from individual meaning making and yet be clearly differentiated from it.

To summarize, all these approaches to collective development highlight some key problems that haven’t yet been properly addressed. First, several approaches to collective development have meant applying theories or models for individual development to collectives at different levels, from groups and cultures to organizations and societies, which poses a problem in terms of validity. Most approaches also don’t seem to describe the functioning in terms of meaning making, complexity, and action at the collective level, but only how individuals relate to the collective. This means that the individual and collective levels are not clearly differentiated, which implies that questions regarding the individual requirements for formulating and participating in collectives at various stages or orders are hard to answer (Parker, 2022). Approaches where individual ways of functioning are applied at collective levels tend to provide linear answers, such as stating that the collective stage is effectuated when a certain percentage of the participating individuals operate on the corresponding level. In other approaches, when collective functioning is seen as a consequence of the nature of the relations and interactions between the individuals, the resulting collective functioning can be understood as emergent, which should be qualitatively different from individual functioning. Collective intelligence and behavior emerging from individuals have been extensively studied in complexity sciences, where phenomena such as swarm intelligence and behavior are widely acknowledged (Mitchell, 2009). In that case, collective meaning making and behavior should be described in a completely different way—addressing issues such as what taking a perspective or feeling as a collective means and whether doing so is within our cognitive capacity. These are questions that will be addressed in the following analysis and theoretical framework.

Aim

The aim of the present analysis is to provide a first outline of a framework for collective development that is general across levels of collectives, or specifies for which collectives it is relevant. This is achieved in three steps: first, identifying basic dimensions of individual development; second, describing five developmental orders for the individual; and third, deducing a corresponding developmental logic at the collective level based on the orders of individual development.

The first step of identifying basic dimensions of development addresses the question of what constitutes meaning making at the individual as well as the collective level. Each is assumed to constitute a basic dimension of meaning making and development, to which all other dimensions or developmental lines can be assimilated, except for the other three basic dimensions. These four basic dimensions will function as a bridge between individual and collective meaning making.

In the second step, the four dimensions will be applied by deriving five orders of meaning making, with the first dimension, perspective taking, taken as a reference and point of departure. The five orders of meaning making are compared with stage descriptions from Ego development theory.

The third and final step applies the same four dimensions to derive corresponding orders of collective meaning making. They are exemplified by collectives of different kinds that are representative of the respective forms of collective meaning making.

Part 1 – Basic Dimensions of Human Development and Meaning Making

The two directions or main branches of adult development stage theories, the one where complex thinking is applied in different domains (such as MHC and Fischer’s Dynamic Skill Theory) and the other taking a more holistic approach to development in terms of meaning making (as in the Subject-Object theory or Ego development theory), represent two ways of understanding and approaching development. According to the former’s perspective, the latter theories may be assimilated into a single dimension of complex thinking or behavior (described by, for instance, MHC). Researchers representing the latter branch may argue that although complex thinking is one dimension of meaning making or ego development, essential elements get lost in such an assimilation. For instance, perspective taking is considered by several theories and researchers to be distinct from complex thinking or even foundational to describing human development (Selman, 1980; Stålne, 2025).

This was also argued by Tom Hagström (2023), who placed perspective taking, expressed as subject-object duality, as one of four basic dimensions constituting the epistemology level of his duality system. The other three were the dualities of self-other (dealing with psychological identity), external-internal (relating to the environment, dealing with action and adaptation) and cause-effect (dealing with complex thinking, structuring information and problem-solving). This work took as its point of departure Subject-Object theory with Kegan’s reference to the Piagetian framework and MHC (Hagström & Stålne, 2015) to define meaning making in terms of comprehensibility (cause-effect and external-internal dualities) and belongingness (self-other and subject-object dualities) and argued that this reflected the epistemological aspects of his duality system denoted DIID, Duality, Identity, Interactional, Dialectical. Similar to Kegan, Hagström focused more on the dialectic and transformational than the stage-wise and taxonomic aspects of the development of, for instance, Jane Loevinger’s Ego development theory.

The notion of basic dimensions can also be observed in the description of Ego development theory by Cook-Greuter in her Nine Levels of Increasing Embrace in Ego Development (although the manuscript is unpublished, it is here considered the richest description of stages of ego development) (Cook-Greuter, 2013, p. 14):

"1. Behavioral dimension (doing): What are the needs they act upon, and what ends do they try to achieve? What goals do they move towards and what life vision do they carry out. How do they cope and master their lives? What function do others play in an individual’s life and how do people interact?

2. Emotional dimension (being): How do individuals feel about things? How do they deal with various affects? What is the range and depth of their awareness? How are events experienced and processed? What are the preferred defenses?

3. Cognitive dimension (thinking): How does a person think? How do individuals structure experience, how do they explain things, make sense of their experience? What is the logic behind their perspectives on the self and the world? What is object and what is subject, that is, what can they see and acknowledge and what remains hidden from awareness?"

Here the behavioral dimension corresponds to acting, the emotional dimension to identification, and the cognitive dimension to complex thinking—but also to perspective taking, which Cook-Greuter considers to be:

“…one of the most salient markers by which to gauge a person’s level of consciousness. Knowing what order of perspective a person can take helps to anticipate what they can see and process regarding both their internal and external reality” (Cook-Greuter, 2013, p. 18).

Although it may be argued that all dimensions should be considered as essentially intertwined—for instance, by recognizing that perspective taking involves a subject as a basis for identification (as reflected in the Subject-Object theory), considering complex thinking to be an action (as expressed by the behavioristic MHC), or thinking to be intertwined with emotions—they will here be disentangled and described separately before integrating them to form an order of meaning making. For instance, social perspective taking was recognized by Selman to be distinct from complex thinking despite the difficulty of isolating them in measurements: “…social cognition cannot be reduced, theoretically or practically, to just the simple application of cognitive skills (structure) to the social sphere (content)” (Selman, 1980, p. 14).

The four dimensions also correspond to a common structural pattern in how philosophical areas are organized in the Western tradition, for instance, in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (Kant, 2004b). Kant expressed our way of being in the world through transcendental aesthetics, how perception is structured by the mind in terms of space and time; epistemology, how we organize our perceptions according to a priori categories such as causality, substance, and unity; and ontology, what is the nature of things in themselves and, later, the essence of ourselves as knowers and beings, which was described by the German idealists, such as Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel (Wilber, 1996). Finally, ethics, how reason and free will may guide our actions in the world, is addressed in Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason (Kant, 2004a).

These four dimensions of meaning making and development, here expressed as perspective taking, complex thinking, identification, and action, will be the basis for this analysis and further elucidated in the following. A guiding assumption and approach of the analysis is that cognition precedes identification and action, which is an observation made by, e.g., Cook-Greuter: “A tenet of constructive developmental theory itself, namely that a certain level of cognition is necessary but not sufficient for stage development…” (Cook-Greuter, 2013, p. 77) and Wilber: “…research shows that your feelings, your art, your ethics, and your emotions, all will follow behind the cognitive line, because in order to feel something, you have to be able to see it” (Wilber, 2007). Here, it is further assumed that perspective taking precedes complex thinking, meaning that you first need to take a certain perspective and then operate on and organize the information you acquire from it. Thus, the analysis will rest primarily on perspective taking and then on complex thinking, after which identification and action will follow in turn.

Perspective taking will form the starting point of describing developmental orders of meaning making. The description is based on the proposed theory by Stålne (2025), in which perspective taking was distinguished and differentiated from complex thinking. Here, five orders of perspective taking (1^st to 5^th person perspective) were formulated similarly to descriptions by Cook-Greuter (2013), Wilber (2007), and O’Fallon and colleagues (2020). Perspective taking was “…conceptualized as the relation between a subject and an object that specifies what one can experience from a certain perspective along with the way one experiences the world” (Stålne, 2025). Taking a point of departure in Selman’s theory of social perspective taking (understanding psychological and relational reality), Stålne extended the scope to include perspective taking on physical reality. The orders of perspective taking were grouped into the three tiers of concrete (1^st and 2^nd person perspective), abstract (3^rd and 4^th person perspective) and non-conceptual (5^th and a postulated 6^th person perspective), in which a similar pattern takes place between the respective pairs. This extended Selman’s theory, which comprised five stages where the highest two corresponded with Stålne’s 3^rd person perspective and Piaget’s formal operational stage. The theory was argued to be general and to define orders of perspective taking as ideal forms and, similarly to MHC, differentiating them from performance of taking a perspective that may vary across domains.

Complex thinking is understood here as the operation and organization of information acquired through a particular perspective. The most obvious theories that describe complex thinking are Commons’ stage-based MHC and Fischer’s Dynamic Skill Theory, although both, due to their behavioristic approach, also involve action: “Thought is action” (Commons, 2008), in contrast to dialectical thinking according to Michael Basseches (1984) and Otto Laske (2008). Although Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, in terms of fitting information into cognitive structures or schemas, can also be argued to involve perspective taking (Stålne, 2025) and action (Hagström, 2023), it is primarily focused on the cognitive aspect and complex thinking, as elaborated in MHC. Along with perspective taking, complex thinking can be said to address the question of truth in terms of accurately understanding reality. An argument for distinguishing it from acting is that you may have sufficient information but not act on it, a commonly recognized problem, for instance, in relation to climate science and (non-)action. Understanding cause and effect is of particular concern since it is presupposed by an understanding of time and space.

Identification involves affective aspects, as described by Cook-Greuter. This, however, focuses on the individual in contrast to Kegan (1982), who sees the essence of ‘ego’ in relating self to others and denotes this aspect as self-other balance or self-other coordination. In this dualistic and dialectic view, there can be no ‘self’ without an ‘other’ to be in relation to. Since this analysis aims to describe collective development, how we identify in relation to others is of particular concern. Although support will be taken from Ego development theory and the Subject-Object theory, the way of identifying will be considered a consequence of the previously described perspective taking and complex thinking.

Action is the outward behavioral dimension of development, encompassing interests, goals, and strategies that one may engage in, individually as well as collectively. Here, the analysis by Hagström and Stålne (2015) will be one resource, along with MHC and Fischer’s Dynamic Skill Theory. From a cultural perspective, the work by Michael Tomasello is relevant for describing how groups of early human beings coordinate within collectives of different sizes to engage in challenges (Tomasello, 2009; Tomasello et al., 1993). This dimension not only describes the scope and complexity of the action taken but also involves what it means to take action. This could address concrete tasks, such as moving objects, abstract tasks, such as publishing an article or signing a contract, or more advanced tasks, such as enacting certain structures. This dimension is also addressed by Bill Torbert in his book titled Action Inquiry, referring to “…a kind of behavior that is simultaneously productive and self-assessing” (Torbert, 2004).

These four dimensions of development are in this analysis considered to be basic, constitutive elements of meaning making, both on individual and collective levels, and will, after this argumentation, be considered as axioms for the further analysis. Also, Loevinger’s (Kohlberg, 1969; Loevinger, 1998) description of ‘ego’ as a “…striving for coherence” can be seen as a guiding principle, since there should be some sort of coherence between the four dimensions in order for meaning making to be considered a ‘system.’

In the following, five orders of development in terms of individual meaning making will be derived from the corresponding order of perspective taking, followed by complex thinking, identification, and action. The somewhat linear approach is a way of minimizing the number of assumptions and choices made in the analysis. The descriptions will be compared with those from other holistic development theories, the Subject-Object theory and Ego development theory. The term ‘order’ is used instead of ‘stage’ since it denotes an analytically derived ideal form rather than an evaluation of a performance by means of some measurement instrument.

One central set of assumptions underlies the choice of stages or orders from the different theories. For instance, a 3^rd person perspective will be argued to correspond with formal operational thinking since they are often perceived as intertwined, for instance, in descriptions of Piaget’s full formal operational thinking. In theory, one could either make a matrix (or higher-order tensor) consisting of all possible choices of matching stages and what it would look like. Another possibility is to align stages and argue that they correspond to one another, or rather see one dimension as key and assimilate the other theories’ respective stages to it, as has often been done with neo-Piagetian theories using performance according to hierarchical complexity as such a basic dimension. Although this approach leans towards the latter, since there is a preferred choice of stages or levels corresponding to each other, where the perspective taking dimension is seen as ‘leading the development,’ correspondences between stages will be argued for and alternative correspondences will be discussed to a lesser extent. The choice to first discern and then apply all four dimensions of development explicitly incorporates belongingness into the construct of meaning making rather than reducing it to comprehensibility and performance. It is also an ambition to demonstrate the process by which an order gradually ‘comes online’ as perspective taking and complex thinking precede identification and action, although this does not exclude the social aspects of complex thinking. Perspective taking should also be considered as an essentially social process, as seeing the world from the other’s eyes. This sequence is supported by Hagström and Stålne (2015), who argue that attaining a certain order of meaning making according to Subject-Object theory requires certain social dilemmas to be resolved, which can be considered as tasks in the domain of social relations. A second and more explicit argument for the sequence is given in the next part and the correspondence between orders of perspective taking and orders of Subject-Object theory.

Part 2 – The Development of Individual Meaning Making

In the second part, the descriptions of five orders of individual meaning making will be deduced from the four basic developmental dimensions: perspective taking, complex thinking, identification, and action. The focus of the descriptions will be on the social and inter-relational domain of development and on views of what a collective is, rather than on the psychological and intra-relational domain, although they are consistent with and influence one another. The descriptions are quite condensed to highlight the broader patterns in the development of meaning making and because of the limited format of a research article. Although these descriptions deserve to be fleshed out in more detail and would require much more space, the ambitions here are, first, to demonstrate and argue for how individual meaning making or ego development can be understood according to these four dimensions, which are argued to be basic, and to offer a proof of concept; and second, to prepare the ground for the part describing the development of the collective.

1. The Pre-socialized Order

Perspective taking

This first order is based on a 1st person perspective, which is described by Stålne (2025) as “…seeing the concrete physical reality of things and matter by utilizing the five senses, where no social involvement is present.” From a developmental psychology perspective, this understanding of the world is present from birth to around 5–6 years of age and includes Piaget’s sensorimotor and preoperational stages. Although modern psychological research demonstrates that a child typically understands and follows pointing during its first year and that taking someone else’s perspective gradually emerges during this period, the functioning is still considered egocentric and pre-social. Kegan (1982) expresses this lack of social perspective taking as the child being embedded in its perspective of the world and having (being) it as a subject rather than having the perspective as an object. The understanding of a collective at this order is limited to physical proximity and engagement in similar activities without further coordination (Selman, 1980).

Complex thinking

How, then, does the child perform mental operations on objects at this order of meaning making? Space and time are not yet present as contexts; everything is experienced as ‘here’ and ‘now,’ so that objects can only be focused on singularly. Piaget’s notion of ‘centration’ thus means that no coordination of cause and effect can be made between objects or events across time or space, which makes the world appear very fluid. A first step toward a more stable view of the world is object permanence, in which the child recognizes that an object continues to exist even though it becomes temporarily hidden. In terms of hierarchical complexity, the nominal, sentential, and preoperational orders capture the child’s performance, in which names are first used as labels for objects and then begin to be linked. An inability to coordinate perceived events and facts or changes in reality is often interpreted by adults as ‘magical thinking.’

Identification

The naming of the order as pre-socialized points to a very atomistic view of the child, since the child is born in a social context and only after 1–2 years of age can separate itself from others in a physical sense and understand its relation to caregivers in an instrumental sense as serving the child’s needs. One could argue that the child is physically and emotionally totally dependent on the caregivers, although this may not be recognized by the child, who wants to do things by itself or even run away from home. A gradual self-understanding is also reflected in language through physical self-labeling, such as “me” or “mine.”

Action

According to the previously described dimensions, particularly as described by Kegan (1982), the child develops from having reflexes as the subject and being embedded in them to having impulses as the subject. The actions are also intimately intertwined with understanding cause and effect in temporally and spatially very limited terms. Typical problems and behaviors in this developmental order can thus involve increasingly developed motor skills, such as moving oneself and objects around and being able to name them. Having impulses as a subject means being had by them rather than being able to control them.

Summary

This brief description aims to capture the pre-social functioning corresponding to Piaget’s sensorimotor and preoperational stages and Kegan’s 0th and 1st orders of consciousness, denoted as incorporative and impulsive, respectively. In Ego development theory, this corresponds to the symbiotic stage 1 and impulsive stage 2. The world is experienced through one’s senses, with a very limited understanding of time and space (all is here and now). The tasks to be carried out are concrete and physical, with a limited scope in time and space.

2. The Socialized Order

Perspective taking

A 2nd order perspective means being able to take a 2nd person perspective, which means seeing the world through another concrete person’s eyes (Stålne, 2025). This ability first manifests in physical reality, as demonstrated in Piaget and Inhelder’s ‘three-mountain problem,’ where the child, from around age 5–6, can recognize what a physical model of mountains placed on a table looks like from different positions. It is also demonstrated in the Sally-Anne test (von Tetzchner, 2018), where the child understands that another person, Sally, will look for her ball where she left it and thinks it is, rather than where Anne has hidden it. This marks a shift in Kegan’s terms, in which the child steps out of the embeddedness of its perspective of the world and can recognize that perception may differ from (physical) reality and that others may have missing or incorrect knowledge. Significantly later, according to Selman’s (1980) theory of social perspective taking, there emerges “…the growing child’s ability to step mentally outside himself or herself and take a self-reflective or second-person perspective on his or her own thoughts and actions and on the realization that others can do so as well.” In this later phase of this order, perspective taking is applied to the psychological and relational domain, and being able to see oneself through the (concrete) other’s eyes, along with the recognition that others can do the same, is the basis of socialization. People are now recognized as having an inner psychological life with thoughts, feelings, opinions, and intentions of their own. According to Selman (1980), the understanding of collectives is limited to dyads in which a leader is a concrete individual who has a relation with everyone affected by the leadership.

Complex thinking

Piaget’s notion of concrete operational thought goes beyond object permanence to encompass the permanence of objects’ properties, such as mass, volume, length, or number, denoted by Kegan as ‘durable categories’ or ‘second principle.’ The focus is still on concrete reality, ‘what is,’ rather than the hypothetical, ‘what could be.’ A more durable understanding of space and time allows the child to reason in terms of cause and effect, for instance, by “…construct[ing] a narrative sequence of events; relat[ing] one point in time to another; construct[ing] fixed categories and classes into which things can be mentally placed” (Kegan, 1994). It may gradually be acknowledged that others’ inner lives can differ from their outer appearance. The understanding of relations is concrete and dyadic, so that one can only have a relation with one other person at a time. Thus, the understanding of leadership is always tied to an individual leader and is understood in terms of unidirectional obedience and as somewhat dictatorial. The understanding of a group as its own abstract entity is not yet developed.

Identification

Although there is a gradual shift taking place over several years and spanning more than one stage of ego development and order of consciousness, we focus here on the socialized order based on the 2nd person perspective’s ability to see oneself through the eyes of the other as a basis for socialization and cooperation. Since this perspective is still concrete, the social context may consist of close family members or peers, starting around 10–13 years of age, when the child becomes highly concerned with their own appearance and fitting in. According to Kegan’s description of the socialized self or interpersonal balance, they are embedded in their close relations and cannot differentiate between their own needs and the needs of the partner or peer. Being part of such a group or relationship creates a very strong sense of belonging, exclusivity, and an us-versus-them feeling.

Action

Cognitive tasks that may be performed here encompass the primary to concrete orders of hierarchical complexity, where simple arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) are learned in the early school years. Actions can also be reciprocal, such that a relation is understood as requiring some ‘give and take,’ or as meeting other people’s actions toward oneself with corresponding retribution according to ‘an eye for an eye,’ although this should be seen as taking place with persons with whom one has no close relation. The latter socialized aspects of this order of development require stepping out of the embeddedness of not only one’s own impulses but also one’s needs in order to focus on behavior that contributes to looking good in others’ eyes and conforming to gain social acceptance. This may involve following social rules for proper behavior in different situations. Concrete tasks may be carried out, and socialization can facilitate the coordination of actions with fellow members of a group, which involves planning, such as building a fence or hunting an animal. The action and behavior can nevertheless be understood as taking place within a social context in which the judgment and acceptance of the group or leader determine whether the action or behavior is successful.

Summary

The comparison between this order and corresponding orders or stages of meaning making or ego development demonstrates this more coarse-grained approach, since descriptions from other theories span more than one order or stage: Kegan’s 2nd (imperial) and 3rd (interpersonal or socialized) orders and Cook-Greuter’s Rule-oriented and Conformist stages (and, to some extent, Opportunistic). This clearly demonstrates the time it takes for a certain order of perspective taking to develop through domains of reality: first applied to physical reality, then to persons and relations, resulting in an understanding of others’ views of oneself, and finally serving as a basis for one’s identification, meaning making, and action. By the time the adolescent has stabilized at Kegan’s 3rd order, the capacity for abstract thought (associated with a 3rd person perspective) has likely already developed in some domains.

3. The Rational Order

Perspective taking

The foundation for this order, in terms of perspective taking, is a 3rd person perspective, which “…means to take the abstract perspective of a generalized other and, from that, visualize and understand reality in abstract terms. An inner world, as well as relations and collectives, can be recognized as abstract entities” (Stålne, 2025). This implies not only stepping outside a relation and viewing it as a neutral observer but also seeing from an abstract perspective that generalizes an infinite number of 2nd person perspectives. In terms of Piaget and Inhelder’s ‘three-mountain problem,’ this corresponds to drawing a map or diagram of the mountains that can represent the table objectively, rather than from a certain vantage point or several. Stable psychological traits and relational domains of reality can be understood as abstract entities and seeing oneself from the outside perspective of an ‘observing ego’ (Selman, 1980). Other collective entities, such as groups, organizations, the state, or our people, are also understood as abstractions, even though one has no knowledge of all the individuals they include. This also entails being able to take the perspective as the collective, although the collective is only recognized as an abstraction rather than something that is alive. This shift from 2nd to 3rd order perspective taking, which means a shift from the concrete tier to the abstract, is arguably greater than the previous shift from 1st to 2nd order, since it opens a completely new way of understanding reality and oneself (Stålne, 2025).

Complex thinking

In terms of complex thinking, the characteristics associated with Piaget’s full formal operational stage align well with a 3rd person perspective. This can be demonstrated with the commonly applied Piaget pendulum (Shayer et al., 1976), where the problem is to identify which of the three variables—string length, weight, and angle—influence the oscillation time of the pendulum. To solve the task, the pendulum needs to be understood as a generalization of all pendulums, and the variables need to be studied separately in controlled experiments, implying variable separation or reductionism and hypotheses that need to be tested according to formal logic. Time and space may now be experienced as exactly defined, absolute, and abstract frames of reference in which we may measure anything from the movement of the pendulum to societal and personal progress. This is also the case for many other scientific experiments that are widely recognized as the norm for thinking in modern society and the aim of schooling (Kegan, 1994). Formal thought, as expressed in investigating and evaluating hypotheses in terms of their logical coherence, allows one to build consistent and robust theories according to which a certain view of reality can be fiercely defended. With clear and unambiguous definitions of time, space, matter, and energy, the 3rd person perspective combined with formal logical thought may give rise to a physicalist or materialist worldview, although the act of formulating coherent worldviews is beyond formal operational capacity. Here, we may also see the development of systems thinking, albeit still in terms of understanding closed systems.

Identification

What is a human being, and how should we view ourselves? The ideal way of identifying, often associated with modern society, can be derived from the 3rd person perspective combined with formal operational thought. Reductionism and variable separation imply that we should see ourselves primarily as individuals. This is also reflected in the emerging sense of a self and of being a unique individual associated with the Self-conscious or Expert stage of ego development:

“The Self-conscious stage 3/4 characterizes people who are now able to step back and look at themselves as objects from some distance for the first time. […] Finding your own voice and becoming your separate self-identity as an adult is the most widely supported and rewarded movement especially in the modern West with its emphasis on agency and individualism” (Cook-Greuter, 2013, p. 36).

In Kegan’s terms of self-other coordination, the individual may gradually transform the close and concrete relationship from the previous state of being embedded in it and having it as a subject into an object of awareness. The new other around which one can form an identity (although individualism carries more weight) is the abstract and formally expressed group, such as an organization with clear boundaries, hierarchies, and working procedures.

Action

Abstract thought implies abstract tasks, which, according to this view, should be captured by what can be measured. One way of characterizing tasks in work life is in terms of single-loop feedback, which describes self-correcting one’s behaviors and operations to reach a given goal (Torbert, 2004). This can also be expressed as problem-solving capacity and is associated by Torbert with the Expert and Achiever stages. The goals themselves, however, are not questioned from this perspective. According to this logic and meaning making, the proper motivations for doing one’s work are measurable and external, in terms of monetary rewards or advancement in the organization. The individualistic view implies that one’s own success may come at the organization’s expense.

Summary

The denotation of this order, Rational, comes from Wilber (2007) and highlights the emphasis on formal thought for succeeding in all parts of life. This order roughly corresponds to the Expert and Achiever stages of Ego Development Theory and to the 4^th order (self-authoring mind) of Subject-Object Theory, as well as the 3/4 transition to that order. As before, perspective taking and complex thinking precede the other dimensions, with formal operational thought typically being demonstrated in awareness of physical reality around 11–12 years of age (Piaget & Inhelder, 1970) and corresponding identification typically emerging around 20 years of age, when many young adults leave home and begin to study or engage in organizational life in new social contexts (Kegan, 1994).

4. The Post-conventional Order

Perspective taking

A 4th person perspective means “…recognizing the relation between a certain view of reality and the abstract interpretation of it due to underlying assumptions of frameworks or outlooks. It can acknowledge what cannot be seen from the respective abstract perspective” (Stålne, 2025).

A pattern between the 1st and 2nd person perspectives that repeats in the transformation from 3rd to 4th person perspectives is the stepping out of the embeddedness of the 1st person perspective’s concrete view and the 3rd person perspective’s abstract understanding of reality. Here, it is recognized that when we take a perspective on our abstract understanding of reality, we also seek to capture this understanding in abstractions. We are thus part of what we try to study rather than neutral, detached observers. This makes any effort to understand physical reality, relations, or oneself, in essence, processual. There can be no final understanding of the truth, only interpretation according to some frame of reference that we may always question. From this order of perspective taking, relations and collectives in general are seen as organic and emergent entities, i.e., as living systems that one can view from the outside or feel from the inside (Stålne, 2025; Wilber, 2007).

Complex thinking

The processual quality that results from the 4th person perspective points toward descriptions and theories of complex thinking that emphasize open systems, as studied in research fields such as complexity science (Mitchell, 2009). In adult development research, this is also expressed in dialectical thinking, which involves transformational thinking, or thinking in terms of “movement through forms” (Basseches, 1984) and “thinking beyond closed systems” (Laske, 2008). In many other approaches, dialectical aspects are seen as taking place in transitions between stable stages, but the dialectical thinking emphasized here aims more at seeing the world as a continuous process and movement. Laske describes dialectical thinking in terms of four moments: ‘process,’ ‘context,’ ‘relationship,’ and ‘transformation.’ The ‘process’ moment describes an awareness of the continuous movement resulting from the 4th person perspective. ‘Context’ means placing objects and understanding entities in relation to a larger whole rather than understanding them separately in a reductionistic manner. ‘Relationship’ points to understanding entities and oneself as being constituted by relationships rather than as individuals having them. Finally, ‘transformation’ comes from combining the other three moments and understanding how systems can be open and undergo transformational processes. An understanding of reality that results from this is relative and moving rather than taking place in a fixed reference system, be it in terms of time and space, ideologies, philosophies, or any system of thought. Causality is also no longer understood as linear and unambiguous but instead as dependent on how we try to observe or investigate it. We also cannot study things without changing what we study, as experienced in psychological research as well as in quantum mechanics. Whether light demonstrates wave or particle characteristics depends on the measurement setup (Wendt, 2015), and the Hawthorne effect means that individuals change their behavior when they know they are being studied, for instance, in organizational research (Chiesa & Hobbs, 2008).

Identification

This shift marks another watershed in Ego development theory: the transition into the post-conventional stages, which implies that the individuals recognize their cultural embeddedness. The way we can understand individuals and ourselves from this view, following the previously described perspective taking and complex thinking, can be denoted as a ‘networked identity.’ This comes from the insight of the dialectical moment ‘relationship,’ from which entities are understood as fundamentally in relation to others. If we understand ourselves, we may see how different parts of ourselves come into being as we relate to others. Thus, we can see ourselves as connected to everyone else to varying degrees, through social networks or shared references of various kinds. If the organization or nation can be understood as a closed system with fixed boundaries, the network may reach everywhere, and influences from other parts of society may always reach in. From this perspective, we can see ourselves and identify with our self-selected place in the social network. With respect to understanding and relating to the larger whole, meaning as a core drive toward action, significance, and self-understanding is recognized (Martela & Steger, 2016). We can also recognize that this self-understanding is only one way of seeing it, albeit the generally preferred one.

Action

The processual aspect is also apparent in our actions, where our goals may be questioned by applying double-loop feedback (Torbert, 2004). This means that beyond our problem-solving ability, we also start to build up an ability for problem formulation, which implies questioning whether we are striving for the right goal and asking the appropriate questions. Thus, action at this order means not only striving for a certain outcome and making sure the outcome is what we really want to achieve, but also making sure that the process is carried out in a good way, in which the integrity of the relations is preserved or even strengthened. The process and journey are just as important as the goal. Since we identify with what we try to understand and achieve, we will, by necessity, change in the process. Here we clearly see that action affects identity, which in turn affects how we think and how we take perspective.

Summary

This order emphasizes how everything, including ourselves, can be seen as interconnected (although to varying degrees) and in constant process. The 3rd and 4th person perspectives constitute the abstract tier, implying that the world is primarily experienced and interpreted by means of abstractions and theories (or meta-theories). If the rational order can be described as having a mechanistic outlook on the world and how to act in it, the post-conventional order is more organic, self-organizing, decentralized, and in a state of continuous transformation. The term post-conventional is taken from Cook-Greuter’s description of stages, which begins with the Individualist and typically also includes the Strategist stage. The term, however, originates from Kohlberg, who divided his six stages into three major levels: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional (Kohlberg & Gilligan, 1971).

5. The Post-autonomous Order

Perspective taking

In terms of perspective taking, we now enter a new tier denoted ‘the non-conceptual,’ where the 5th person perspective means:

“…to take the subject-object relation and other non-conceptual entities as objects of awareness by means of intuition. Patterns or phenomena that manifest across the division of subject and object can be recognized” (Stålne, 2025).

Other objects of awareness may be entire worldviews rather than theoretical or metatheoretical frameworks, which are not only conceptual but also capture emotional and experiential aspects of meaning systems. If the 4th person perspective means recognizing the limitations of rational thought in understanding ourselves, this perspective means stepping out of the meaning system in its entirety to identify deeper and more constitutive archetypal patterns that may manifest in physical reality as well. Any analysis that results from such a perspective cannot be performed within any strict logico-axiomatic system but must instead be carried out as a more intuitive process. An archetypal structure can be understood as a deep pattern that may result from certain properties or characteristics of our ways of making meaning and our way of differentiating subject from object. Archetypal patterns reside in a non-conceptual space that is neither mental nor physical (Atmanspacher & Rickles, 2022).

Complex thinking

The nature of the complex thinking required to appropriately process the material that results from seeing the world from a 5th person perspective is here tentatively assessed to be the paradigmatic or cross-paradigmatic order of hierarchical complexity (Commons, 2008), although dialectical thinking is still required. The combination of both may be regarded as an advanced version of metathinking, a term coined by Shannon and Frischherz (2020) to denote the combination of dialectical thinking with logical thinking (or thinking in terms of higher orders of hierarchical complexity). Patterns that may be intuited across the subject-object boundary may involve archetypal structures for individuals and processes expressed, for instance, in stories and myths, complex and transforming system characteristics and properties, and fractals. Causality may be experienced non-locally, outside our typical mental understanding of time and space (Wendt, 2015), and it is from this order that it is possible, in principle, to intuit how we tend to project subjective entities such as a ‘now’ onto objective reality.

Identification

A common description of how our self-image and sense of identity develop is in terms of an arch (Cook-Greuter, 2013), which starts with the child’s embeddedness and develops through a differentiating process in which the peak of rational thought and conventional linear and logical reasoning provides a stable and solid sense of a separate self and individualism, after which that structure becomes gradually deconstructed and the self becomes more fluid. A suggested source of belongingness, albeit lightly held, is archetypal patterns (Jung, 1959). An archetype may be expressed in terms of different roles from which one may act in different contexts, such as ‘teacher,’ ‘philosopher,’ or ‘healer,’ or as stories, myths, or relational dynamics that we may more or less consciously keep repeating. These archetypes are not seen as strict rules or logics for how to be, but rather as attractors (Freinacht, 2019) and weak patterns that tend to be repeated due to the constitution and structure of our psyche, language, and the ways consciousness manifests in the world.

Action

In accordance with the previous two orders, a possible way of describing how one takes action at this order is by means of triple-loop feedback, which is described by Torbert in terms of:

“…what quality of ongoing awareness we need to cultivate in order to embrace the four territories of experience [our attention, strategies, actions and outcomes] and test legitimacy and integrity of our actions” (Torbert, 2004, p. 55).

Identifying with an archetype when taking action could imply, first, that one acts as a medium through which the archetype can act in the world and, second, that the pattern or archetype may be reinforced by the action, similar to Wilber’s (2007) description of ‘Kosmic habits.’

Summary

Due to the scarcity of data, the non-conceptual aspects of this analysis, and the intuitiveness of this process, the proposed characterization of this order should be considered tentative. It is assumed here that the two approaches to describing complex thought are qualitatively different and should not be reduced to one another. This assumption is motivated, first, by an ambition not to prematurely ‘close down’ any attempt to describe this order before more data and insights are available. Descriptions of archetypes span conventional areas, such as system archetypes, to more transpersonal ones, such as Jungian archetypes (Jung, 1959), which transcend subject-object boundaries so that they can be seen to exist in the psyche and govern subjective experience while being objective at the same time. Although a 6th person perspective is sometimes discussed (Stålne, 2025; Wilber, 2000), such descriptions are considered too speculative and tentative to expand on here.

Part 3 – Orders of Collective Meaning Making

Here, the development of meaning making will be explored with the collective as a unit of analysis. This description will rest on the same assumptions as those for individual meaning making, for instance, that the four basic dimensions—perspective taking, complex thinking, identification, and action—can also be applied to collective development. The orders are thus seen as ways for collectives of different types to navigate reality and act within it, but they are also considered to constitute archetypal patterns. Descriptions of collective meaning making or logic need to account for the nature of collective identification and action. It will thus be assumed that collectives can have identity and agency in their own right and not only through the individuals who are part of the collective in question, an approach applied by Hagström (2023). There are also growing discourses based on such assumptions in which collectives and cultures are attributed traits and characteristics we associate with individuals. For instance, trauma is discussed at a collective level in terms of intergenerational and cultural trauma that individuals may recognize but accurately locate in the culture they are part of (Hübl & Avritt, 2020). In public and organizational life, one is also sometimes expected to represent or act on behalf of a community or take the perspective of a generalized other, e.g., a customer, on one’s organization. These abstract and generalized perspectives of collectives understood as abstractions can be taken from a 3rd person perspective onwards, although understanding a collective as a living being is likely more advanced than this.

The description of collective meaning making calls for a definition of what a collective is, its ontological status and, more importantly, what a collective agent is, taking into consideration that individuals operating from different orders conceptualize and participate in collectives differently. Here, the concept of heed (Weick & Roberts, 1993), i.e., intentionality as in the purposeful and rehearsed tripping of a clown, is useful for distinguishing between interaction that may be interpreted as an example of advanced collective leadership by an outside observer and the actual functioning of the collective as a consequence of heedful interrelating resulting from the participants’ order of meaning making. For instance, a person unable to take a 3rd person perspective, even with support, cannot heedfully occupy a formal role that requires abstract thought.

Can we talk about collective agents at all, or should all collective action be reduced to individuals with agency? When applying the four basic dimensions of development to collectives, a first intermediate step from individual to collective agency can be taken through the notion of the extended mind, an area describing how our mental operations can be considered to involve tools outside our skulls and skins (Clark, 2003), for instance, by counting on my fingers, using pen and paper to support my memory when multiplying two three-digit numbers, or using a computer and AI. Similarly, I can extend my perception by using glasses, a microscope or telescope, or another measurement apparatus that may be included in the observing subject (Barad, 2007). Extended emotion can result from my attachments to my possessions, ideas, or work, or from experiences of art, literature, or architecture (Slaby, 2014). Extended action is implied when going from smashing a volleyball to hitting a tennis ball, where the latter involves a racket as an extension of my body, a tool that I can see as part of myself. One may also view the car one is driving as an extension of oneself, as with a computer performing calculations or an AI agent writing code. This may be referred to as extended agency and is often included in extended mind (Clark, 2003), but can be traced back to Merleau-Ponty (2023) and his example of the blind man’s cane.

The following step is to replace all these extensions with persons, so that a friend can help me perform a calculation, tell me what he sees around the corner, be in emotional contact with me, and finally fetch an item for me. The roles can also be reversed so that I am the extension of my friend. The next step is to replace all person-extensions with abstract groups or collectives, such as an organization through which I see, think, and can act, and with which I am identified and emotionally invested. Finally, to consider collectives as having agency in themselves, they need to be seen as emergent entities based on the individuals’ relations and networks, and we can be regarded as part of this collective or culture and feel it from the inside as well as conceptualize it from the outside. This final step will be further elaborated in the description of the fourth order of collective meaning making.

A proposed definition of collective agency that is general across all five orders of meaning making is that a collective requires the participants’ recognition of and identification with the collective, implying a sense of belonging and emotional attachment to it, some coordination of efforts by means of collective information processing, and a common task or activity in which to be heedfully engaged. Although there are several definitions of collectives in the social science literature emphasizing different aspects and appropriate to different orders, the closest correspondence to the proposed definition is found in CCL’s definition of a leadership ontology, DAC, which rests on the similarly expressed three outcomes of a leadership culture: direction (task), alignment (coordination), and commitment (identification with and commitment to the collective) (Drath et al., 2008; McGuire & Palus, 2018). These three outcomes form dimensions or aspects that are manifested across three stages of development. Hagström (2023) describes an agent, individual or collective, in terms of demonstrating both comprehensibility and belongingness, being engaged in some outward-directed action, and also having an inside and a reflecting ego.

Wilber’s (2007, p. 149ff.) notion of a collective as a social holon can further connect the participating members with the collective’s functioning. A social holon can be any social system, such as a flock of geese, members of a poker game, or an organization. Building on Arthur Koestler (1978), Wilber (2007, p. 34) describes a holon as a “whole that is part of other wholes” and uses it as the fundamental building block of his AQAL theory (Wilber, 1996). A holon can be any healthy system, be it a cognitive or biological hierarchy, such as an atom, molecule, or cell, up to an individual human being, whose meaning making was described in the previous section. One difference between individual and social holons is that the former has a dominant monad, whereas the latter has a dominant mode of discourse or predominant mode of mutual resonance, which can be described as a shared mode of communication, action, and feeling of a shared “we.” However, the understanding and quality of the “we” is a consequence of the order of meaning making of the participants and their heedful participation in the collective. Another difference is that although “…individual holons go through mandatory stages, social holons don’t” (Wilber, 2007, p. 151).

The development of collective meaning making is in the following argued to demonstrate archetypal qualities, which needs further clarification. ‘Archetypes’ are often associated with the work of C. G. Jung (1959), who traced the concept back to ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato and Philo Judaeus. Here, they may be understood as original forms from which humans were made or copied, and as synonymous with Plato’s usage of ‘ideas’ as abstract, ideal forms that are more real and complete than the concrete instances we experience. Jung described archetypes such as ‘the mother’ as manifesting in the collective unconscious or in myths and fairy tales. Here, an ‘archetype’ is seen as an underlying pattern that is more general than particular instances. For instance, although systems, even social ones, can be seen as unique emergent phenomena arising from the interaction of constituent elements that may behave nonlinearly, unpredictably, and chaotically, systems archetypes can be seen as general underlying patterns that pervade and tend to repeat themselves. These patterns can govern and be traced in basic structures of our language, where statements typically consist of a subject and an object, and in the pervading structures of stories as described in The Hero’s Journey (Campbell, 2008). Developmental archetypes are patterns that can be associated with how individuals or collectives develop, such as in terms of process, ‘differentiation and integration,’ or orders, ‘the rational age.’

In the following, the five developmental orders of meaning making will be discussed by taking the perspective of a certain collective. These five orders are here denoted collective development archetypes since they can be seen as collective patterns of interaction consistent with individual meaning making. These function as attractors—archetypes—from which collectives tend to operate. As with the descriptions of individual meaning making, the following descriptions will be sparse due to the postulated and more hypothetical nature of this analysis. It will be an attempt to answer the question: “What will be the nature of the collective if the participating individuals operate according to this meaning making?”

Collective development can be understood as represented across time, by looking historically at different ways of organizing, as will be the focus of this analysis, or across space, in current examples of organizing, and the results may differ. In this first approach to describing collective development, the division of orders according to the five perspectives may appear coarse-grained at the individual level and even more so at the collective level. Note that the cases described result from a certain combination of perspective taking, complex thinking, identification, and action that naturally fit together and thus form a pattern or archetype that can be understood as an attractor and is thus intuitively consistent. Other combinations are, of course, possible, but here they are argued to be somewhat more unstable.

1. The Archaic Order

This is the first collective archetype corresponding to the pre-socialized order of individual meaning making, where action may be collective but without any shared understanding.

Perspective taking

The perspective taking of this collective archetype corresponds to the perspective of the individuals, that is, a 1st person perspective without considering others’ perspectives. This means that the surrounding environment, including other individuals, is experienced by means of one’s own senses and understood concretely in the here and now. The collective is only an aggregate of individuals, and the collective’s perspective equals the different perspectives of the individuals without any coordination or integration.

Complex thinking

As at the individual level, preoperational thought is a probable mode of thinking among the participants. Coordination of activities is performed by observing the movement and behavior of the other participants. More complex collective information processing, such as exchanging conceptual information, is not performed in the group at this order.

Identification

This dimension is here interpreted as the scope and quality of the boundary between the collective and its surroundings; that is, what counts as part of the collective and what is outside. The way the individual identifies as part of the group is defined by being in physical proximity and by the commitment of the individuals to engage in the same activity as the other participants. Emotions may result from identifying with a group based on superficial criteria, e.g., according to self-categorization theory, in which hostility toward outsiders may be present (Ray et al., 2014). Although the corresponding order is denoted pre-socialized, this order may still be highly social and collective in its nature.

Action

The action is defined by engaging in an activity with a concrete and immediate intended outcome, such as a crowd trying to breach a gate. Since there is no shared understanding or goal, the group is not coordinated in its actions beyond observing each other’s movement. The actions of the collective are simply an aggregate of the actions of the individuals, possibly involving the use of physical tools.

Summary

The example of a crowd breaching a gate is intended to demonstrate the absence of social perspective taking and more heedful complex information processing, although an external observer may interpret the situation in terms of, e.g., collective emotions, institutional forces, or archetypal forces. This way of organizing without mutual perspective taking corresponds to what cognitive scientist and anthropologist Michael Tomasello and colleagues (2012) have described as ‘individual intentionality,’ which refers to problem-solving without social coordination, characteristic of large primates and hominids. Although primates, such as chimpanzees, may collectively engage in territorial battles with rival packs, the efforts are not coordinated—the individuals’ goals happen to coincide with the goals of the other pack members. Here, the three outcomes in CCL’s DAC ontology are addressed but not fulfilled, since this order precedes CCL’s first stage or leadership culture (McGuire & Palus, 2018). This order demonstrates many similarities with the archaic mutation, according to Gebser (2020).

2. The Traditional Order

Although the traditional archetype may be associated with traditional values in modern cultures, here it denotes previously occurring ways of organizing in small groups. Heedful participation in a collective of this order requires a 2nd person perspective and recognition of how one is seen by others, e.g., the leader of the collective.

Perspective taking

Here, the collective is controlled by the leader as an individual in a dyadic relationship with all participants, and thus the leader’s perspective governs the collective’s perspective. A physiological feature that has contributed to social perspective taking among humans is the white sclera, which facilitates the ability to follow each other’s gaze rather than head movement (Tomasello et al., 2007). As a consequence, humans are the only species that have been demonstrated to employ a 2nd person perspective to cooperate (Huber & Lonardo, 2023; Tomasello et al., 2012).

Complex thinking

Information processing and collective assumptions about the nature of the world and other collectives will be limited by the leader’s view, although interaction within the group will, of course, take place among other members of the collective as well. The development of first gestures and then spoken language as ways of communicating concrete information marks a significant shift from the archaic to the traditional way of functioning (Ong, 2013). The oral tradition enabled the sharing of stories, including myths and descriptions of particular concrete events, with an audience present at the moment of sharing. This oral means of communicating focuses on voicing and hearing, as described in the magic and mythical structures according to Gebser (2020).

Identification

If this dimension describes the scope and quality of the group, a limiting factor is the ‘Dunbar number,’ the number of individuals with whom the leader may have a personal relationship, which is commonly recognized as around 150, the typical size of hunter-gatherer societies. The quality of the group in terms of cohesion is characterized by a very strong boundary between those who belong to the group and those who are outside. Individuals who are typically considered part of the group should either be born or married into it. According to this archetype, a typical form of collective can be a tribe or a family. Emotions may be coordinated by means of rituals, symbols, and shared movements and beliefs, which may facilitate strong social cohesion and a weak sense of individual self (Páez & Rimé, 2014). In intergroup relations, upholding the collective’s honor by means of some code of behavior is of central concern (O’Neill, 1998).

Action

Here, efforts may be coordinated among group members through language, enabling them, for instance, to hunt in groups or build houses. To some extent, this allows specialization, and strong social cohesion may also enable caring for injured people. The efforts of individuals are primarily driven by loyalty to the leader and community and possibly a fear of exclusion from the collective, which may significantly reduce the individual’s chances of survival.

Summary

The functioning of this order can be compared with Tomasello’s first major evolutionary leap for humans, that of ‘shared intentionality.’ This means that individuals can coordinate their intentions and goals with others. It is commonly argued that this skill of exerting shared intentionality is an evolutionary watershed that only humans, Homo sapiens, have developed, in contrast to other primates (Tomasello, 2009).

Due to the participating members’ understanding of relations (from a socialized meaning making perspective) as being dyadic, leadership is here associated with a single individual and authority figure with whom everyone has a personal relationship. This view of leadership shares characteristics with a ‘dependent leadership culture’ (McGuire & Palus, 2018), where leadership is seen as, in essence, exerted by an individual (Drath, 2007). This second order of collective meaning making can be seen as an extended agency where other particular individuals make up the extension, or take the role of extension.

3. The Modern Order

This collective order can be traced back in history to the formation of city-states and the development of literacy (Ong, 2013) and can also be seen in the context of ‘modern man’ as the term is used in anthropology. The focus here will be on the former, and the collective that will be described is the formal organization.

Dealing with abstractions is often associated with complex reasoning, but it is here seen rather as a new order of perspective taking, where the 3rd person perspective means seeing the world as abstractions and generalizations (Stålne, 2025). This perspective is often considered objective and sometimes denoted as ‘the view from nowhere’ to emphasize its lack of awareness of its own embeddedness. Complex thinking from the abstract order onwards means performing mental operations on those abstractions in terms of natural laws and causal relations (Commons, 2008; Stålne et al., 2014).

Perspective taking

In this description, the participating individuals are assumed to be able to take a 3rd person perspective and recognize abstractions and generalities, a development initiated with the axial revolution (Vervaeke, 2019) and articulated in the Theory of Forms by Plato (2007), who argued that abstract ideal forms should be considered more real than their concrete particular instances. The development of abstract perspective taking and thought is often associated with the development of literacy as a psycho-technology, which has gradually been transmitted to the broader population throughout history. Reality is collectively understood objectively, with fixed frames of reference, for instance, in terms of absolute time and space as described by Isaac Newton (1689/2023). It is also assumed that all participating individuals share these frames of reference.

In contemporary settings, the organization may be seen as an actor in an external environment of abstract rules, laws, and regulations, competing or cooperating with other organizations and interacting with possible customers, all understood as abstractions or generalizations. A collective perspective, according to this order, means taking the perspective as a collective and seeing as the organization or nation.

Complex thinking

Complex thinking at the collective level refers to how the collective distributes, organizes, and operates on information. At this order, information is distributed across the organization through formal structures and top-down governance, following abstract and logical procedures and adhering to the organization’s governing principles. The top-down direction of organizing work and distributing information is complemented by a view of the individual as capable of relevant input into the process, at which point compromises may be made. Extended agency can be performed by a manager formally delegating tasks to a subordinate. The organization may also be understood as a cognitive system of which all individuals are a part, for instance, in the case of bringing a naval vessel into port (Hutchins, 1995) or performing tasks on an aircraft carrier (Weick & Roberts, 1993).

Identification

In order for an individual to join an organization, one has to be formally accepted by means of some process, such as hiring or election, and one may also leave it by one’s own choice. The organization’s boundary is significantly looser than that of the previous tribe or family, though still clear and unambiguous, a consequence of formal logical thought. People in leadership positions may foster a certain culture and collective identity around the values and goals the organization pursues. The collective, and here the organization, is recognized as having an identity and existence on its own terms. To the extent that collective emotions are emphasized, they are typically not central to corporate life, although organizations are generally ascribed emotions such as desire and regret, as well as intentions. Emotions may be tied to prestige, such as pride if one’s nation wins the World Cup or guilt if it embarks on an unjustified war (Sullivan, 2014).

Action

An organization that functions according to the modern order in a typical manner is a large hierarchical organization that operates through long-term strategies set by executive managers, which are then divided into sub-goals and distributed down the organizational chain. At each position, a leader or employee may exercise discretion to complete the tasks at hand within the given time and resource constraints (Törnblom et al., 2018). To the extent that inner qualities such as motivation are acknowledged, efforts are motivated by incentive systems that foster effort and work ethic among the assumed self-interested employees. Top-down control of actions typically gives rise to single-loop feedback, in which the strategies and directions set by top management seldom get updated. This is typically observed in large industrial organizations operating in stable markets or with long-running and predictable projects, for instance, in the automotive or construction industries.

Summary

According to Tomasello’s research, a third step in human evolution is denoted ‘collective intentionality,’ at which individuals can coordinate without having a personal relationship but rather by establishing norms, cultural conventions, rules, procedures, and later abstract institutions (Tomasello, 2009). This requires abstract thought, which presupposes a 3rd person perspective. By combining a 3rd person perspective and formal operational thinking, i.e., thinking in terms of closed systems of thought, the collective is understood as a static abstraction rather than a living entity. This still qualifies as a collective agent, which List and Pettit (2011) define according to the following three criteria or features: first, having a representation of the environment; second, having motivational states that specify how things should be in the environment; and third, having the capacity to intervene in the environment based on the discrepancy between the previous two. Hence, if we take an organization as a case study of a modern collective, it is reasonable to liken it to an orange machine acting in a mechanistic universe (Laloux, 2014; Stålne, 2016a). This order demonstrates many similarities with Gebser’s (2020) mental mutation and corresponds to an ‘independent leadership culture’ (McGuire & Palus, 2018), where leadership is assumed to be exerted by individual leaders in formal managerial roles.

4. The Postmodern Order

The fourth order or archetype is a pattern that may manifest in many different contexts. It is based on a 4th person perspective that has developed in different phases, first articulated in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (and possibly even earlier) (Kant, 2004b), then in phenomenology and Niels Bohr’s Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics (Barad, 2007; Stålne, 2025), applied in various research fields and postmodernity, and reaching the broader culture in the civil rights movements of the 1960s.

Perspective taking

The 4th person perspective enables a critical examination of all modern claims to objectivity due to its ability to see both the object being described, for instance, a human being, and the subject with its embeddedness in terms of language and limitations. Objectivity should instead be seen as an abstract perspective from which one may acquire one view and frame of reference on the world. Combined with a view of complexity as recognizing open systems that undergo transformations, the system from which one may take a perspective is understood as being alive. This may entail a movement, culture, social network, or value system. This collective order is appropriately and heedfully engaged in by recognizing it as a social holon that may be observed from the outside but felt from the inside (Wilber, 2007).

Complex thinking

To a great extent, dialectical thinking aims to ‘unlock’ or ‘free’ thinking from the shackles of formal logical thought, which implies clear boundaries, stringent structures, and unambiguous claims to truth. From a 4th person perspective, not only truths but also frames of reference are recognized as fundamentally observer-dependent, in that a measurement is always an interaction. Dialectical thinking is thus better suited to understanding a world in motion. From the collective’s perspective, the multitude of frames of reference leads to an information system that is more of a patchwork accompanied by internal tensions of different forms, rather than a coherent whole. The most obvious example of how information spreads in networks is through the internet and social media, which may be the infrastructure that has contributed most to facilitating the growth of this order. A clear drawback of this more advanced way of collective functioning is the collective uncertainty that follows from a lack of a common frame of reference, which inevitably leads to the condition recognized as ‘post-truth.’ One way of organizing information according to a network logic is the viral spread of ideas through social media and the operation of generative artificial intelligence based on large language models, which is often described as more intuitive than regular computer programs based on rule-based formal logic (Stålne, 2024). A link between complexity in terms of a networked and connectionist logic and postmodern theory of language was introduced by Cilliers (2002).

Identification

The relational and boundaryless identity of individuals gives rise to a collective identity best described as a network. The social movement is chosen here as an example of a collective that may function according to this archetype. A movement has no clear boundaries, and anyone who chooses to may join. From a 4th person perspective, one can understand the movement as an entity of its own and take its perspective, although there is likely a qualitative difference between the movement’s perspective and what is perceived by the individual. Movements may be of different sizes and scopes and may transcend organizational boundaries, as exemplified by movements around climate change, gender equality, anti-racism, or digitalization, where memes and emojis can be seen as vehicles for transmitting emotions (Shirky, 2009). From this order of meaning making, emotions are understood as belonging to the collective, with related phenomena such as emotional climates, emotional atmospheres as “affective qualities in public space” (Slaby, 2014, p. 43), emotional communities, etc. (von Scheve & Salmela, 2014). The interior of a collective or social system can be understood as a social field that Scharmer and Pomeroy (2024) argue requires “fourth-person knowing,” which has significant overlap with a 4th person perspective (Stålne, 2025).

Action

Distribution of information and tasks is typically decentralized, and the task is first to address the core issue that motivated the movement and, second, to cultivate its links in terms of the quality and quantity of its relations, connections or links, and nodes or individuals. In other words, to grow. Communication within the network and between nodes is not only a means of spreading information but also of strengthening the connections and identity of the network and movement. Thus, the act of sharing information is not only instrumental in addressing its tasks but also in sharing values that energize the movement.

Summary

The network-based movement described transcends previous family, organizational, and national boundaries, and one can say that the human world is more connected than ever. Network logic is sometimes advocated in organizational settings, for instance, in terms of self-organizing or ‘teal’ organizations. On the one hand, this may be challenging since most organizations still operate under laws grounded in formal logic and have clear boundaries regarding who is an employee and who is not. On the other hand, operating heedfully according to more than one logic or developmental order is possible if participants have the ability for complex and dialectical thinking. Still, the attractors or archetypes should be regarded as more stable ways of operating. A significant difference between taking a collective perspective of this order and that of the previous order is that the previous 3rd person perspective assumes a static abstraction, whereas this 4th person perspective assumes the collective to be a living being that has emerged from the participants’ relations. A culture may thus be understood as a living being with characteristics similar to those of individuals, whether healthy and thriving or exposed to traumatic events and experiences, which are transmitted across generations if not properly addressed. This order describes an agency that is extended from the participating individuals into a new collective that is constituted by the relations among the participants. This corresponds to an ‘interdependent leadership culture’ (McGuire & Palus, 2018), where leadership is assumed to be exerted primarily by the collective rather than by individual leaders. This collective order is assumed to involve both deconstructive and reconstructive aspects of postmodernism (Hampson, 2007; Kegan, 1994).

5. The Evolutionary Order

When we understand the previous networked movement, it may be assumed from a 4th person perspective that the collective is a direct consequence of the participating individuals who give life to the movement as an emergent property of their relations. The movement is thus understood to be unique, with no objective position from which one can stand to observe or formulate rules that govern the movement—it lives its own life. An understanding from this 5th order of collective meaning making is that it may run deeper than that, at least according to the following description. This order is assumed to be governed by archetypal patterns residing in a space beyond and underlying the physical and mental domains of reality.

Perspective taking

The 5th person perspective of the individual enables a recognition of archetypes as deeper structures of reality that are not clearly visible but rather need to be intuited. Rather than seeing intuition as a quality or activity performed by the individual, one may, from this perspective, understand it as seeing with something that is beyond oneself.

Complex thinking

The archetypes may be understood in fractal terms, since this evolutionary archetype also comprises all previous archetypes. This means that the previous examples of collectives—the individual, the tribe, the organization, and the movement—can all be understood not just as examples or concrete instances but also as deeper evolutionary patterns that tend to manifest across different contexts.

Identification

The view of collective identity associated with the postmodern archetype was constituted through participants’ relations. Here, the archetype is, in itself, seen as the collective. Individuals may join the collective by recognizing that it is there and tapping into it by identifying with it, understanding the world, and heedfully acting from it, with the risk of losing oneself in the process.

Action

From this perspective, it may be clearer that the four dimensions according to which development is structured are really intertwined, so that seeing, thinking, identifying, and acting as a collective archetype become one and the same. Triple-loop feedback, described earlier, may point toward the quality of awareness as the key aspect in acting from an archetypal quality, rather than asking the right question and coming up with an appropriate answer and action.

Summary

The final collective order can be understood as evolutionary since it contains all previous orders and is suitable for experiencing (seeing, understanding, identifying, and acting) human collective development in terms of human sociality. The qualities and aspects experienced in previous orders or archetypes suggest that the collective orders of development should also be seen as patterns that not only exist but are also dynamic in that they may change when enacted, albeit slowly.

Discussion

This article presents a structured approach to describing collective development. It consists of three parts: first, an identification of four basic dimensions of human development; then, an application of these dimensions according to increasing orders of perspective taking to derive five corresponding orders of meaning making; and finally, a derivation of five corresponding orders of collective meaning making. The first step is primarily based on the Piagetian framework as described by Kegan and the work of Hagström and Stålne. The resulting dimensions of development are perspective taking, complex thinking, identification, and action, which are argued to be qualitatively different and independent of each other so that none may be assimilated into another. The four dimensions are intuitively plausible since they correspond to common ways of dividing the psyche (perception, cognition, emotion, and volition) or, in philosophy from Kant and onwards (transcendental aesthetics, epistemology, ontology, and ethics). The second step of deriving five orders of meaning making has two purposes: first, to test the four dimensions and the theoretical description of perspective taking to ensure that they give results that correspond to descriptions from other sources, primarily Ego development theory according to Cook-Greuter’s description; and second, to give a sufficiently succinct description for the third step. The third and final step consists of deriving the five collective patterns from the corresponding orders of individual meaning making. The collective patterns are presented by means of instances of collectives that act as typical examples: an individual, a tribe, an organization, a social movement, and finally, a collective archetype. The archetypes are considered frequently enacted patterns throughout history that function as attractors since they are intuitively reasonable from their respective perspectives.

The presented framework thus describes a basic and general structure that can facilitate a conversation between the aforementioned theories and frameworks for collective development. It may also encourage engagement with and conversation between different collective orders and between individuals and collectives of varying levels. Although there are several theories defining collectives that could offer support for this analysis, none has at this point been found to properly address all five orders. Instead, the focus has been on defining and describing collective agency at all orders, for which CCL’s DAC ontology and Hagström’s (2023) work on collective agency offer some support. This systematic approach of deriving collective levels from basic developmental dimensions and individual meaning making is thus argued to go beyond the description of characteristics at a surface level and reflect deeper evolutionary archetypal patterns. This analysis enables a whole new conversation around collectives, collective development, collective evolution, and archetypes and how they shape the world we inhabit.

Another area of relevance for the framework is that presented by the Inner Development Goals (IDG), which aim to bridge inner development with addressing grand challenges around sustainability, such as those covered by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This was achieved by identifying 25 abilities and skills that we need to develop, as individuals and as a collective, to have a better chance of fulfilling the SDGs (Jordan, 2021), along with methods for supporting and cultivating inner development (Stålne & Greca, 2022). The IDG skills were identified through a global survey and analyzed thematically into five dimensions: being, thinking, relating, collaborating, and acting. No underlying theory or framework clarified how the skills would contribute to addressing the SDGs, which was a deliberate choice. The framework proposed in this article can offer just that—a theoretical description of which skills or dimensions should be regarded as basic and foundational (the perspective taking and complex thinking skills, and the being and acting dimensions), how they contribute to individual meaning making and how this, in turn, defines collective meaning making, along with specifying the scope of challenges or tasks that may be addressed from the respective order, be it the SDGs or other ways of conceptualizing the global metacrisis (Nørgaard et al., 2025) or meaning crisis (Schmachtenberger, 2019; Vervaeke, 2019).

Thus, the proposed framework addresses the causal relation between individual and collective development that Wilber characterizes with the concept of tetra-evolution, i.e., a reciprocal interaction between individual and collective, inner and outer development. This requires a proper discernment between individual and collective development, which this analysis aims to offer. Although the analysis acknowledges this mutual interaction, it leans toward emphasizing perspective taking and cognition, and the inside-out aspects of development rather than the outside-in aspects associated with, e.g., Vygotsky’s theory (Hagström & Stålne, 2015; see also Hagström, 2023, for an elaborate discussion). It also emphasizes the individual holon’s place in the driver’s seat and sees the collective holon as a causal consequence, although the cultural context affects the individual, e.g., by acting as a conveyor belt. For sure, no individual development will take place in a social vacuum. This discernment between individual and collective meaning making is relevant to Parker’s (2022) dilemma around assessing collective development, where Weick and Roberts’ (1993) notion of heedfulness implies that the participating individuals need to be addressed as well to ensure that a certain order of collective meaning making is intentional and conscious. This means that the collective functioning needs to be assessed along with that of the individuals.

The analysis and its results should be considered tentative, particularly in relation to the highest and most complex order of meaning making and order of collective development, on which the scope and ambition of the analysis have been grounded. The process and results are based on the author’s own experience in leadership and organizational research, knowledge of research on adult development and inner development in general, and interactions with colleagues and friends. Although there has been an attempt to uphold some degree of stringency and empirical support, above all in proposing a structured approach to deriving a framework for collective development, at this stage the process has, to some extent, been an intuitive one.

Although the theory of collective development should be characterized as a metatheory and a hypothesis based on its axioms and assumptions, further work to test or validate it is called for. Axioms as starting points of the analysis, rather than hypotheses to be tested, involve describing development as a stage-wise progression and choosing the four basic developmental dimensions: perspective taking, complex thinking, identification, and action. These dimensions may, to some degree, be operationalized and measured in themselves. Perspective taking is today assessed only up to the 3rd person perspective (Diazgranados et al., 2011); complex thinking up to the dialectical (Laske, 2008) and metasystematic stages (Commons et al., 2014); and the acting dimension is addressed in Elliott Jaques’ Stratified Systems Theory using time span and time horizon as ways of measuring action in terms of task complexity and performance, respectively (Törnblom et al., 2018), although MHC is argued to measure task complexity as well. The identification dimension, by contrast, is not yet sufficiently operationalized. Meaning making as a whole can be assessed by means of WUSCT (Hy & Loevinger, 1996) or the Subject-Object interview (Lahey et al., 1988), and the interaction between the dimensions in individual meaning making has long been discussed (see, e.g., Heikkinen, 2009; Stein & Heikkinen, 2009). One first analysis would be to develop a way of measuring the 4th person perspective and compare the results with those of Ego development theory. Some theoretical validation of the orders of individual meaning making may be achieved through comparison with the Subject-Object theory, as argued in the article. Assessing the development of collectives, such as groups, organizations, or cultures, according to developmental levels has frequently rested on individuals’ intuitions and on content-based models such as Spiral Dynamics (Stålne, 2016a). An ambition of this analysis is to make such judgments more explicit and to ground them in more foundational structural aspects such as collective perspective taking, organization of knowledge, the nature of collective boundaries, and feedback mechanisms, while also taking into consideration other factors such as institutional context, support, and other contingencies. This analysis offers a first broad description of the nature of such assessment and facilitates further discussion of such approaches.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank colleagues and friends for helpful contributions, feedback, and discussions that have been immensely valuable to the work, particularly Pelle Billing, Tom Hagström, Sofia Kjellström, Maria Mårtensson, and Johan Ranefors. The reviewers of this article have also offered many valuable insights that have contributed to the improvement of this paper.