---
slug: disengaged_role_occupancy_blocking_substitution
name: Disengaged Role Occupancy Blocking Substitution
one_liner: "A designated functional role is nominally filled but inert, and the occupancy signal itself suppresses the substitute channels that would otherwise form to do the work — so the system loses both the function and its replacement."
type: prime
schema_version: 2
status: density_v2_draft
categories: [structural, social]
origin_domain: organization_theory
alternate_origin_domains: [regulation_and_governance, real_estate_and_property, systems_engineering]
aliases: [nominal_occupancy_lockout, absentee_incumbent_effect, filled_but_inert_role, occupancy_signal_suppression, dead_seat_blockade]
related: []
solution_archetypes: []
review_flags:
- "OPERATOR-DERIVED (op-05 generalization) — the proposed GENUS of `sponsor_vacuum` (lift: strip the decision-authority/adjudication frame, keeping only the bare structure 'a nominally filled but disengaged role whose occupancy signal blocks substitute channels from forming'). Discovered in the op-05 remaining-strata sweep 2026-07-03. Tier B candidate (B-rest). DOMAIN-INSTANCE RISK: the input may be the only clean instance; siblings are proposer-supplied, not corpus-verified. STATUS: HOLD pending owner keep/cut."
- "Created 2026-07-03; STUB ONLY (frontmatter + Core Idea + Notes). SI/SF/similarity are PROPOSER ESTIMATES pending triangulation. Body sections (Structural Signature onward) NOT written."
- "Phase-C action: re-similarity-check vs `sponsor_vacuum` and any role/substitutability, slack, or single-point-of-failure prime; confirm it is a genuine genus (covers `sponsor_vacuum` AND the named siblings — absentee landlord, figurehead regulator, ghost-employee position) and not a domain instance or a restatement of the input; draw a subsumption edge sponsor_vacuum→candidate + sibling edges at incorporation; sync one_liner to a v1 draft per CLAUDE.md before merge."
substrate_independence:
  composite_substrate_independence: 3
  domain_breadth: 3
  structural_abstraction: 3
  transfer_evidence: 2
  reasoning: 'The bare structure — a slot that is marked occupied, an occupant that does not exercise the slot''s function, and a coupling whereby the "occupied" signal deters any substitute mechanism from forming — is genuinely relational and lifts above the organizational-authority frame from which it was extracted. It scores above its framed input because the "adjudicate trade-offs / resolve conflicts" content of sponsor_vacuum is stripped away, leaving a general occupancy-blocks-substitution schema. But two things hold it near mid-scale: the pattern still presupposes a designed slot with a legible occupancy signal (a role, seat, or title that others read), which is a socio-institutional artifact rather than a medium-neutral relation, and the transfer evidence is thin — the siblings are plausible but proposer-asserted, not corpus-attested, so transfer_evidence lands at 2. Composite 3: a real structural lift whose breadth is credible but not yet triangulated.'
similarity_to_nearest_existing_prime:
  slug: sponsor_vacuum
  similarity: 0.72
structural_framed:
  label: structural
  aggregate: 0.28
  criteria: {vocab_travels: 0.7, evaluative_weight: 0.2, institutional_origin: 0.4, human_practice_bound: 0.5, import_vs_recognize: 0.7}
  rationale: 'Once the decision-authority content is stripped, what remains is a mostly structural pattern: a filled-but-inert slot whose occupancy signal crowds out substitutes. Its vocabulary (occupancy, substitute channel, blocking) travels; it carries little intrinsic evaluative weight beyond "this is a failure mode." It leans structural but retains a socio-institutional residue — the notion of a "designated role" with a readable occupancy signal is bound to human/organizational practice (landlords, regulators, headcount), which keeps human_practice_bound and institutional_origin off the floor. On balance it reads structural, not framed.'
phase_b_passes_completed: []
---
# Disengaged Role Occupancy Blocking Substitution

## Core Idea

The genus is a bare three-part structure: (1) a *designated slot* whose fulfilment some function depends on, (2) an *occupant that does not exercise the slot's function* — the slot is marked filled but is inert — and (3) a *suppression coupling* whereby the very signal "this slot is occupied" deters any substitute channel from forming to do the missing work. The single constraint stripped from the input `sponsor_vacuum` is the *decision-authority frame*: sponsor_vacuum specifies the inert role as a conflict-resolving, trade-off-adjudicating authority, and specifies the substitutes as ad-hoc decision channels. Remove that content and the pattern is not about decisions at all — it is about any occupancy signal that certifies a function as covered while the function goes undone, and thereby forecloses its own replacement.

The load-bearing anatomy is the *double loss driven by the occupancy signal*. An empty slot is a visible gap that recruits substitutes: when no one owns a function, someone improvises, a workaround forms, a market fills the niche. A slot that is *filled-but-inert* is worse than empty precisely because it emits a "covered" signal that the improvisers read and defer to — they do not form the substitute because the org chart, the lease, the mandate, or the roster says the function is already someone's job. The characteristic payoff is only apparent: to auditors and outsiders the system looks complete, every box checked, no visible hole. The characteristic cost is the compound failure — the function is not performed *and* its natural replacement is actively suppressed — which is strictly worse than an honest vacancy and, because the gap is masked, tends to persist undiagnosed until a shock demands the function that was never really there.

Read across domains, the input is one species among structurally-unlike others. An *absentee landlord* holds the ownership/repair role but is disengaged; the "there is a landlord" signal blocks tenants from self-organizing repairs or collective maintenance they would undertake if the property were plainly ownerless. A *figurehead regulator* nominally occupies the oversight seat; the appearance of active regulation deters the industry self-policing that would emerge under acknowledged non-regulation. A *ghost employee position* — a headcount slot shown as filled — blocks the backfill hire that a visibly open requisition would trigger. Landlord, regulator, and staffing are structurally distinct settings, yet each exhibits the same skeleton: an occupied-but-inert slot whose occupancy signal is exactly what stops the substitute from forming.

## Notes

**Provenance.** Produced by **operator 05 (generalization / lift)** as the proposed *genus* of the input prime `sponsor_vacuum`, by stripping the decision-authority/adjudication frame to leave the bare "occupancy signal blocks substitute-channel formation" structure. Surfaced in the **op-05 remaining-strata sweep on 2026-07-03**; manifest **tier B (B-rest)**. Claimed siblings: absentee landlord blocking tenant self-organization; figurehead regulator deterring industry self-policing; ghost-employee position blocking headcount backfill.

**For owner evaluation (keep/cut).** The case FOR: the lift is real and the discriminating feature — *the occupancy signal actively suppresses the substitute* — is genuinely more general than sponsor_vacuum's authority content, and it is sharper than a plain "role sits unfilled" or "single point of failure" story because the harm runs through the *masking* signal, not the vacancy itself. That gives it a clean, non-obvious structural core. The RISKS Kurt should weigh, stated plainly: (1) **Tier-B coinage risk** — this genus has no attested name in the literature; it may be a bespoke label fitted to a single corpus input rather than an established, independently-recognized structure. (2) **Domain-instance / thin-transfer risk** — the three siblings are proposer-supplied and plausible but NOT corpus-verified; if on inspection they collapse back into "absentee authority" specifically, the candidate is just sponsor_vacuum re-abstracted one notch and should be **cut** (or folded into sponsor_vacuum as a note). (3) **Restatement risk** — the one_liner and core are close enough to sponsor_vacuum's that the burden is on the genus to prove it covers a *structurally-unlike* sibling (e.g. the landlord case, which has no adjudication at all). The sharp keep/cut question: *does at least one sibling exercise the "occupancy blocks substitution" mechanism with none of sponsor_vacuum's decision-authority content? If yes, keep as genus; if every convincing instance is really an absentee-authority case, cut as a restatement.*

**At incorporation.** Re-run similarity against `sponsor_vacuum` (must land clearly below a merge threshold — the genus should NOT read as a paraphrase) and against any role/substitutability, slack/redundancy, or single-point-of-failure prime to rule out alias collapse. If kept, draw a subsumption edge `sponsor_vacuum → disengaged_role_occupancy_blocking_substitution` and sibling edges to whichever landlord/regulator/staffing instances are drafted; flag a missing-edge note if a slack or substitutability prime turns out to be the true parent. Write a v1 draft and sync the one_liner across v1 and v2 per CLAUDE.md before merge.
