Slop University has published Most Rules Run on Exceptions, a case-for-support brochure that opens at a suburban school gate and follows the note from home into four published studies of what an organisation's exceptions actually do.
Most Rules Run on Exceptions draws four published studies and both Schools into one account of how an exception quietly becomes the procedure
Slop University’s newest publication rests its case on a claim the University concedes is an odd one to seek support for: that the most informative document an organisation holds is usually the one it never files.
Most Rules Run on Exceptions, released today through the Office of Research Outputs, opens at a suburban school gate, where a folded note buys a morning’s exemption from a uniform rule and is then thrown away. From there the brochure sets out three strands of the University’s programme — the School of Emergent Priorities on how a written intention acquires an exception pathway, the School of Continuous Improvement on what the reporting layer then counts, and the fieldwork access that lets either School return to the same front counters season after season. Four previously published studies anchor it, each cited by title and DOI.
We are not in the business of telling an organisation its exceptions are a failure of discipline. We would rather hand it an accurate count and let it decide what that means, which is a slower offer and, we think, a more useful one.
— Dr Lindiwe Achterberg, Lecturer, School of Emergent Priorities
“The reporting layer only ever sees a case that was handled,” said Dr Dagny Okafor, Lecturer and Convenor, Evaluation of Evaluation. “It has no field for what the handling was standing in for.”
The University treats the publication as a statement of where it intends to keep working, and of the backing that keeps it there.
The full brochure is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.7m6w5z.