Abstract

AI-native organizations increasingly create, interpret, and act through persistent networks of human- and AI-generated representations. Existing theories explain important aspects of this condition, including organizational learning, memory, coordination, information processing, resilience, digital organizing, and AI governance. Yet they do not fully explain how organizations preserve coherent, consistent, and traceable organizational cognition when intent, decisions, execution, outcomes, and learning are distributed across evolving representation networks. This paper develops Cognitive Integrity as the emergent organizational state associated with sustained Organizational Correspondence. It argues that Cognitive Integrity is distinct from alignment, coordination, knowledge management, organizational memory, learning, dynamic capabilities, and resilience because it concerns the preservation of coherent represented cognition across human and AI actors over time. The paper defines the construct, specifies its boundaries, develops a conceptual model, identifies preservation mechanisms and failure modes, presents a focused set of theoretical propositions, positions the construct in a nomological network, and outlines a preliminary measurement and research agenda. The paper contributes to organization theory and information systems research by explaining why AI-native organizations require not only more information, better coordination, or stronger governance, but also mechanisms for preserving the correspondence conditions from which coherent organizational cognition emerges.