Contemporary organizations
increasingly define success through outcomes rather than outputs, yet
initiatives routinely fail to deliver intended value despite apparent execution
health. This paper introduces Outcome Orchestration as a continuous governance
discipline concerned with strengthening value delivery by enabling accountable,
judgment-supporting governance of outcome intent, evolving contextual
conditions, and execution decisions across the project life cycle. Drawing on
established literature in project governance, organizational sensemaking, and
control theory, we define interpretation drift as divergence in understanding
of outcome intent, tradeoffs, and success criteria across or within
stakeholders over time, often without explicit disagreement, and treat it as a
precursor to outcome decay. We develop a formal construct vocabulary,
articulate governance control objectives spanning intent specification through
validation, and position AI as a scalability enabler rather than a defining
element of the discipline. The paper concludes by articulating testable
propositions and a staged research agenda, while deliberately avoiding the
prescription of standardized instruments or implementation protocols, which are
intended as targets for subsequent empirical studies. The discipline is
positioned as a missing semantic governance layer that complements existing
project delivery methods and governance structures rather than replacing them.
