Definition
The accumulated gap between an institution's capacity to act and its capacity to detect, answer challenges to, reverse, and repair its errors. As action capacity compounds — more data sources integrated, more decisions automated, more downstream consumers, more dependence — while correction machinery stays fixed, corrective debt grows even if no policy document changes.
It matters because it is the historical form of the Ethotechnical invariant: the rate at which agency accumulates against the rate at which the capacity to answer it does. Technical modernization without matching correction capacity adds to the debt, and it changes the institution's politics without a single decision. The corrective debt calculator is its instrument.
Tests that show it is in place
- Action capacity and corrective capacity are tracked on separate axes and compared.
- A scope expansion rechecks correction capacity rather than assuming it.
- The debt is reported as a number the institution owns, not a one-time audit finding.
References
- Exception learning · Theory
- Corrective capacity self-assessment · Tool
- Corrective learning eval · Eval