Flourishing — Examine the Conditions for Good Work
Connect the purpose and experience of work to evidence, wellbeing, and development outcomes in HEPO's Ethical Management solution.
The Decay Diagnostic — Examine Patterns That Erode Good Work
Use 30 reference patterns across betrayal, oppression, and disrespect to define what deserves attention, examine evidence, and choose a response.
Use 30 reference patterns across betrayal, oppression, and disrespect to define what deserves attention, examine evidence, and choose a response.
The Decay Diagnostic is the reference framework for examining harmful working patterns within HEPO's Ethical Management solution. It gives leaders and practitioners names for concerns such as broken commitments, retaliation against feedback, and the erasure of contribution. In HEPO, an organisation can translate relevant patterns into definitions, relate them to evidence, and examine the resulting readings before choosing a response.
The framework contains 30 patterns across three axes and four scopes. Its purpose is to make a concern precise enough to investigate. A pattern label is a starting point for that work, not a finding about someone's character.
Three axes describe what is being eroded
| Axis | What it concerns | A practical question |
|---|---|---|
| Betrayal | Trust, loyalty, and commitment | Are agreed commitments being kept or openly renegotiated? |
| Oppression | Autonomy, fairness, dignity, and voice | Can people challenge a demand or raise a concern without being punished? |
| Disrespect | Meaning, contribution, presence, and recognition | Does the organisation acknowledge the work and people on which it depends? |
Broken promises can become routine. A channel for feedback can remain open while people learn that speaking carries a cost. Recognition can disappear while delivery figures still look healthy. The framework directs attention to those relationships between practices and consequences.
Four scopes describe where the concern matters
| Scope | What the framework considers |
|---|---|
| Self | A person's own experience, reflection, and ability to act consistently with their principles |
| Team | Relationships, shared commitments, and the treatment of contribution within a group |
| Organisation | Policies, incentives, authority, and repeated practices across the enterprise |
| Society | The organisation's relationships and effects beyond its own boundaries |
These are conceptual scopes. They do not imply access to private thoughts, a compulsory progression from one scope to another, or automatic observation of society. A software deployment has its own configured observation scopes and available evidence. The two must be connected deliberately.
Thirty reference patterns
The following vocabulary follows the numbered catalogue in Chapter 7 of Decay in the Enterprise and How to Contain It. The short descriptions below explain possible working manifestations for discussion. The book develops the wider scope relationships and containment method; it is available through the Library.
Betrayal
| Pattern | Working manifestation to examine |
|---|---|
| Disloyal Opportunism | Personal advantage repeatedly undermines shared commitments |
| Information Hoarding | Relevant knowledge is withheld from those who need it |
| Strategic Omissions | Material context disappears from an account or decision |
| Promise Devaluation | Commitments are treated as disposable without discussion |
| Psychological Abandonment | Support is withdrawn when colleagues depend on it |
| Ethical Bypassing | An outcome is used to excuse an unexamined harm |
| Credit Misappropriation | Collective work is represented as one person's achievement |
| Norm Sabotage | Agreed practices are repeatedly undermined |
| Data Manipulation | Records are altered to sustain an appearance of success |
| Trust Erosion by Delegation | Responsibility is passed on while accountability disappears |
Oppression
| Pattern | Working manifestation to examine |
|---|---|
| Gaslighting Leadership | People's accounts are repeatedly denied or their concerns discredited |
| Double Standards | Similar situations receive different treatment without a defensible reason |
| Feedback Retaliation | Raising a concern is followed by punishment or exclusion |
| Boundary Creep | Demands gradually exceed agreed roles, availability, or limits |
| Virtue Co-optation | Ethical language is used to protect conduct that contradicts it |
| Performance Exploitation | Delivery depends on persistent depletion of the people doing the work |
| Invisible Overwork | Necessary additional effort remains unacknowledged |
| Selective Transparency | Disclosure is shaped to control the account people can see |
| Compliance Masking | Formal conformity substitutes for examining the consequences of a practice |
| Gatekeeping Innovation | Authority repeatedly blocks useful contribution or experimentation |
Disrespect
| Pattern | Working manifestation to examine |
|---|---|
| Ritual Desecration | Shared practices lose their meaning through contempt or empty repetition |
| Title Inflation | Titles suggest responsibilities or authority that the work does not support |
| Space Disrespect | Shared environments and others' working boundaries are disregarded |
| Temporal Violation | Other people's time and attention are treated as expendable |
| Cultural Erosion | Visible style becomes disconnected from the practices it represents |
| Erasure of Contribution | Work and contributors disappear from recognition and organisational memory |
| Cynicism as Intelligence | Dismissiveness becomes the expected response to a serious proposal |
| Humor as Violence | Humour is used to humiliate or exclude |
| Memory Theft | The account of past work is rewritten to control credit or legitimacy |
| Theatrics of Listening | Consultation is performed without meaningful consideration of what is said |
The patterns can overlap. They are neither 30 independent diagnoses nor a one-to-one inverse of the 22 virtues. The organisation defines which relationships matter in its application.
Work one concern through the software
Suppose a team repeatedly discovers that an agreed handoff date changed without anyone telling the receiving team. Promise Devaluation offers a question to investigate. The owner defines what counts as a commitment, how a revision should be communicated, and which records cover the relevant work.
The Trait Catalogue holds the definition and its relationship to Honor or Trust. The Trait Evaluation Engine evaluates the selected evidence; a cultural reading helps the owner examine the pattern and its basis. Missing notifications, changed dependencies, or incomplete records may explain part of what appears. A late handoff alone is insufficient to decide that a promise was disregarded.
After review, a recommendation may support clearer handoff ownership or an agreed escalation practice. The leader decides the response. A programme can help teams practise it, and subsequent review examines whether the working conditions changed.
Containment is a decision and a practice
Naming a risk makes it discussable. Evidence helps establish its scope. A response still needs someone with the authority and willingness to change the conditions that sustain it. A dashboard cannot supply that responsibility.
The organisation adapts the vocabulary with its practitioners and participants. Implementers connect permitted evidence and observation scope; reviewers consider alternative explanations and the limits of a reading. The visibility boundary applies throughout.
The historical cases provide material for examining governance failures. They do not establish that a configured diagnostic would have predicted those events.
See the Honor measurement example → · Ethical Management · Solutions