Organization Structure — Proposed Guide

Planned API — Reference Only

Organization Structure: An organization graph may contain subsidiaries, departments, teams and reporting lines. These relationships serve different…

Overview

An organization graph may contain subsidiaries, departments, teams and reporting lines. These relationships serve different purposes and should not be collapsed into a single tree.

Key concepts

Model legal-entity ownership separately from collaboration teams and employee management. Use explicit parent links where hierarchy is meaningful.

Implementation considerations

Define cycle detection and cross-entity access before exposing a graph. A visual hierarchy must not imply inherited financial approval authority.

Illustrative data model

This local fixture shows a possible representation for the concepts above. It is not an endpoint response, production configuration or a claim that the described capability is implemented.

JSON fixture

Fictional concept fixture

{
  "reference_only": true,
  "topic": "Organization Structure",
  "organization_id": "org_example_123",
  "subsidiary_id": "sub_example_123",
  "department_id": "dept_example_123",
  "parent_id": "parent_example_123"
}

Design review checklist

Document which organization owns the organization structure representation and which actor may view or change it.
Test the boundaries of organization id, subsidiary id, department id, parent id using synthetic values, including missing or inconsistent references.
Before future implementation, obtain an approved contract and review failure behavior. This documentation does not authorize production activation.

Proposed data types

Illustrative field dictionary
Name	Type	Description
organization_id	string	Stable fictional organization reference; not a secret and not evidence that a resource exists.
subsidiary_id	string	Stable fictional subsidiary reference; not a secret and not evidence that a resource exists.
department_id	string	Stable fictional department reference; not a secret and not evidence that a resource exists.
parent_id	string	Stable fictional parent reference; not a secret and not evidence that a resource exists.

Managers

Users & Organizations

Subsidiaries