Rules that impose costs without advancing organizational goals.
Bozeman's definition is diagnostic: a rule that serves someone's goal is not red tape to them. What counts as red tape depends on whose objective is being measured.
In practice
- The purchase approval that irritates the engineer is the control the finance director relies on; both descriptions of the same rule are accurate.
- A form that duplicates a check already done upstream is red tape to everyone, including the person who wrote it.