Glossary entry

Preserved Dependence

Glossary entry in Failure modes. Definitions, checks, and evidence for Preserved Dependence.

Quick takeaways

An institution's continued reliance on compensatory work it knows about, kept because relying on it costs the institution less than ending it.

Definition
Minimum evidence
Operational tests

Definition

An institution's continued reliance on compensatory work it knows about, kept because relying on it costs the institution less than ending it. Nothing is missing from its account of operations. The number is read, priced, and kept.

It is a conflict of interest, not a gap in information or organizational learning. Measuring the work more closely, or coordinating the workaround better, serves the institution's interest as well as the workers'. What changes the outcome is authority over the budget, staffing, and priorities that produce the work, held by the people who carry it, or leverage from outside the institution. Distinguish it from the case where the institution cannot see the work, which is the subject of the workaround presumption and absorption as concealment.

DiagnosticStructural

Scale: Organizational · Phases: Deployment, Audit · Measurability: Semi-quantitative · Maturity: Core concept

Scope: B. Failure modes (why Ethotechnics exists). Recurring ways responsibility dissolves, authority drifts from its evidence, and harm lands on people with no route to challenge it.
Genealogy: Separates two readings of the same workaround: the institution cannot see it, or the institution sees it and prefers it. The first calls for an instrument. The second calls for standing.

Adjacent terms

Workaround Presumption Exception Absorption Corrective Standing

References

Insulation · Theory

Glossary territory

Recurring ways responsibility dissolves, authority drifts from its evidence, and harm lands on people with no route to challenge it.

Explore Failure modes in the glossary index.

Entry details

Last updated: 2026-09-26
Term version: v1.14.0
Changelog: View updates

Tests and evidence

Operational tests (3)

The institution's records show it has priced the fix and chose to keep the arrangement, or the record shows nobody has priced it.
The people who carry the work are named, with whether they hold binding authority over the conditions that produce it.
A reported improvement states whether it removes the dependence or makes the sacrifice easier to sustain.

Minimum evidence checklist

Artifact: A costed decision record for the workaround, or a statement that none exists.
Behavior: A workaround the institution has priced and declined to fix, still in place at the next review.
Metric: Recurring workaround classes with a costed decision to keep.

Copy citation (APA/BibTeX)

Cite this glossary entry Formats: APA, MLA, Chicago, BibTeX, RIS

Version

v1.14.0

Last updated

Sep 26, 2026

Permalink

https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/preserved-dependence

DOI

Pending Zenodo deposit

APA

Ethotechnics Institute. (2026). Preserved Dependence. Ethotechnics glossary. https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/preserved-dependence

MLA

Ethotechnics Institute. "Preserved Dependence." Ethotechnics glossary, 2026, https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/preserved-dependence.

Chicago

Ethotechnics Institute. "Preserved Dependence." Ethotechnics glossary. Sep 26, 2026. https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/preserved-dependence.

BibTeX

@misc{glossary_preserved-dependence,
  title={Preserved Dependence},
  author={Ethotechnics Institute},
  year={2026},
  howpublished={Ethotechnics glossary},
  url={https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/preserved-dependence},
  version={v1.14.0}
}

RIS

TY  - WEB
TI  - Preserved Dependence
AU  - Ethotechnics Institute
PY  - 2026
UR  - https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/preserved-dependence
ER  -

Scholarly metadata

Authorship

Ethotechnics Institute · Ethotechnics Institute · hello@ethotechnics.org

Contact: hello@ethotechnics.org

Publication details

Published: Dec 3, 2025
Last updated: Sep 26, 2026
Version: v1.14.0
DOI: Pending Zenodo deposit

License: CC BY-SA 4.0

Credit Ethotechnics Institute, include the term title + version, and link to the glossary permalink.

Archive: Wayback Machine history

Changelog

v1.14.0 · 2026-09-26 — Added three terms: Principle of Non-Expropriation of Resilience, Compensated Performance, and Intrinsic Performance. They separate how well a system works on its own from how much of its success depends on people quietly absorbing its errors, and limit how much of that absorption an institution may demand.
v1.13.0 · 2026-09-22 — Rewrote category descriptions and scope notes to the current framing, replaced vague or promotional definitions in 89 entries and 109 short definitions, removed unsourced adoption and effect claims, and cut filler words and redundant sentences from 38 entries and 20 short definitions. No term was added, removed, or renamed.
v1.12.0 · 2026-09-22 — Added Typed Decision Model and Confidence-Gated Execution, cross-linked to the worked example of a decision-model gate on refunds.
v1.11.0 · 2026-09-22 — Added Decision Threshold, Shaping Hop, and Reason Substitution: the places typed decision models locate authority, shape decisions without making them, and separate the reason from the decision.
v1.10.0 · 2026-09-19 — Promoted 64 orphaned short definitions to full canonical entries across core concepts, governance, decision states, and anti-patterns, and removed three redundant short definitions (procedural-realism, intake-cinema, legibility-illegibility).
v1.9.0 · 2026-09-19 — Added Feedback Proximity, Asymmetric-Capacity Restraint, Adaptive Capacity, Compensatory Adaptation, and Corrective Power, aligned the short definition of Ethotechnics with its canonical authority-and-correction framing, and refreshed the glossary's category scaffolding off the earlier moral-system vocabulary.
v1.8.0 · 2026-09-19 — Added Insulation, the unifying failure mode of the framework: whatever stops the consequences of institutional decisions from traveling back to those who can revise the generating rules, with its channels, its good and bad forms, and its self-ratifying loop.
v1.7.0 · 2026-09-18 — Added Non-Finality, Consequential Contradiction, and The Excluded Case, and generalized the falsified denominator into the falsified ledger — completing the five concerns and the fallibilist ground they stand on.
v1.6.0 · 2026-09-18 — Added Human Non-Substitutability, Safe Incompleteness, Anti-Conversion Rights, Abstention, Constitutional Debt, Discretion Migration, and Corrigibility Rent — the person-side principles, the three abstentions, and the rent concept.
v1.5.0 · 2026-09-18 — Added Exception Absorption, Exception Learning, Case Corrigibility, Structural Corrigibility, Institutional Learning, Corrective Debt, and the Workaround Presumption, formalizing the historical turn: reading institutions through their failure trajectories rather than their stated controls.
v1.4.0 · 2026-09-18 — Added Residual Complexity, Complexity Displacement, Falsified Denominator, Closure Without Remainder, Constitutional Governance, and Post-Optimization Rigor, embedding the foundational contention of burden redistribution.
v1.3.0 · 2026-09-11 — Added Attestation, Liability Record, Carve-Out, Delegation Chain, Composed Latency, and Silent-Harm Discovery, each bound to the standard clause that requires it.
v1.2.0 · 2026-09-08 — Added The Non-Conversion Principle, Exit Cost, and Jurisdictional Path Dependence, each linked to the theory essay that argues for it.
v1.1.0 · 2026-01-09 — Expanded scholarly metadata, operational tests, and provenance notes.
v1.0.0 · 2025-12-03 — Initial glossary release with stable permalinks.

Library search

Library search

Preserved Dependence