Abstract
Organisational transformation under radical uncertainty exposes the limits of both hierarchical planning and loosely emergent coordination. This paper introduces the Starling Organisation as a distributed governance architecture inspired by murmuration dynamics, designed to reconcile coherence and adaptability through shared purpose, local sensing, and identity alignment. Drawing on interpretive analysis of a large-scale public sector crisis response programme, practitioner dialogues, and longitudinal classroom research, the study develops a theory of engineered coherence in which governance design, rather than leadership style alone, structures adaptive capacity. The contribution lies in specifying the structural conditions under which distributed coordination becomes reliable rather than incidental. The Starling model is advanced as a contingent governance architecture particularly suited to high-uncertainty, information-asymmetric environments, rather than as a universal alternative to hierarchical design. In doing so, the paper reframes organisational transformation as a problem of coordination architecture and contributes to ongoing debates within change and development scholarship concerning how coherence is achieved under conditions of volatility and complexity.