The Scope of Making Rules Matter [REFERENCE]
Note: “Reference Articles” are more technical and provide nuanced detail on concepts that would disrupt the flow if I had to explain them every time. They are also evolving documents and may include half-baked ideas or notes for future development.
Summary
The Making Rules Matter framework applies to collaborative enterprises—groups with a shared, deliberate purpose and the ability to adjust their own expectations. It does not attempt to explain society-level or cultural systems, which lack a common unifying task and operate more like environmental conditions than collaborative structures themselves.
With that said, “collaboration” is understood as an ever present sphere of experience that is dependent upon, but distinct from, co-existing spheres of information and relationship (for more read this). Meaning, that while MRM is not a theory of families or friendship, it is a theory of how families or friends collaborate when they need to.
For integral folks: This perspective it prioritizes is the individual subject experience (upper-left quadrant) of socially-constructed enterprises (lower-left quadrant).
Though this framework may trigger interesting parallels to broader considerations of law and society, moral philosophy, game theory, and others, those overlaps should be considered interesting applications of the framework, but are not central to it.
In contrast, if the theory, research, evidence, case-study, or whatever is concerned with how people work together then this framework must have an answer for it, a clear way to re-direct it, integrate it, or change itself to account for it.
Key Distinctions Between This Framework and Other Approaches
I’m a fan of each of the following theories and theorists, so these comparisons are only to show how the MRM integrates, augments, or distinguishes itself from related frameworks.
This framework differs from Benard Suits’ philosophy of games (The Grasshopper)
Suits is concerned with the metaphysical definition of a “game,” built around fixed constraints, prelusory purposes, and a lusory attitude.
This framework focuses on real collaborative enterprises where constraints are adjustable, expectations evolve, and agents must jointly manage viability conditions.
Suits analyzes what a game is (“the voluntary overcoming of unnecessary constraints”) while this framework analyzes how groups coordinate when they share a task and can modify the structures governing them.
This framework differs from Patrick Schauer’s theory of rules (Playing by the Rules)
Schauer treats rules (“entrenched generalizations”) primarily as devices that constrain discretion within legal and bureaucratic contexts.
This framework treats expectations as relational coordination structures that enable reliability, predictability, and joint action.
Schauer is also very clear he is talking about rules within the context of decision-making, while this framework is much broader.
Playing by the Rules is also a philosophical treatise on how rules work—that is a descriptive analysis, whereas this framework should be considered prescriptive.
Finally, where Schauer tends to presume hierarchical rulemaking and fixed authority, this framework applies to groups that can revise their own expectations.
This framework differs from Ostrom’s ADICO grammar
ADICO provides a syntax for classifying institutional statements into Attribute, Deontic, Aim, Condition, and Or Else.
This framework is less concerned with a syntactic classification of different prescriptive expectations (though it does have one) and more with the system of implicit expectations that surround and stabilize them.
This framework differs from standard teamwork and leadership literature
Traditional models tend to prioritize interpersonal dynamics such as trust, communication style, and psychological safety OVER concerns related to group structures.
This framework integrates those concerns with explicit structures—clear expectations, boundaries, agreements, and meta-agreements—as a dynamic relationship.
Instead of focusing on leader traits or influence, it highlights the co-created structures that shape behavior independent of personality.
This framework differs from behavioral economics and incentive-focused models
Incentive theory analyzes how agents respond to payoffs and penalties.
This framework treats expectations as coordination scaffolds, in which incentives are only one component among constraints, permissions, signals, and legitimacy conditions.
This framework differs from policy, law, and governance theory
Governance work assumes large populations governed by centralized rule-making bodies.
This framework focuses on groups where “participants” include both authors and agents—meaning the group retains the ability to self-organize—which includes all types of organizational governance systems from strict conventional hierarchies to completely decentralized collaborations.