Gersick's (1991) punctuated-equilibrium model alternates long equilibrium periods of incremental adaptation within a fixed 'deep structure' with brief revolutionary periods that dismantle and reorganize that deep structure

Connie Gersick's 1991 multilevel synthesis, "Revolutionary Change Theories: A Multilevel Exploration of the Punctuated Equilibrium Paradigm" (Academy of Management Review 16(1):10–36), compares change models across six domains — individual adult development, group development, organizational development, history of science, biological evolution, and physical science — and argues they share a common punctuated-equilibrium pattern: long equilibrium periods in which a system's structure constrains it to incremental adaptation, interrupted by short revolutionary periods of fundamental reorganization.

The load-bearing construct is deep structure, offered as "the set of fundamental 'choices' a system has made of (1) the basic parts into which its units will be organized and (2) the basic activity patterns that will maintain its existence" — described as "a highly durable underlying order." Deep structure plays two roles across the cycle: it is what persists and limits change during equilibrium, and it is what disassembles, reconfigures, and enforces wholesale transformation during revolutionary punctuations.

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For the vault's self-rewiring thread this supplies a cross-domain frame distinct from both the cognitive-science account (claim-schema-change-four-mode-taxonomy, claim-cognitive-conflict-prerequisite-for-restructuring) and the knowledge-graph account (claim-kgcl-defers-merge-split-topology-changes): restructuring as periodic dismantling of a durable deep structure, not continuous in-place editing. The companion trigger claim is claim-tushman-romanelli-1985-reorientation-exogenous-trigger. See moc-schema-change-and-restructuring.