Governance–Reality Decoupling (GRD) An Interpretive Framework for Institutional Misalignment and Symbolic Compliance Figure 1. Governance–Reality Decoupling (GRD) conceptual architecture illustrating the widening interpretive gap between governance systems and operational reality. Many institutional failures do not begin with operational collapse or visible governance breakdown. They begin interpretively, through a progressive widening of the gap between formal governance systems and operational reality. Abstract This paper introduces Governance–Reality Decoupling (GRD) as a conceptual framework explaining how institutions progressively lose alignment between formal governance structures and operational reality. The paper argues that institutions may continue producing symbolic stability, compliance legitimacy, and governance coherence while operational execution increasingly depends on informal adaptations, shadow coordination mech...