My current employer has a very strange policy: They actually abide by most of their own rules.

Most large organizations I've been a part of have two sets of rules: There's the written rules in the big book o' rules. But there's another set of rules, rules which are never written down. Often, the unwritten rules are even unspoken rules. They're alluded to only indirectly by winks and shrugs, statments of the written rules but with an ironic arched eyebrow, or by plain monkey-see-monkey-do. Often, they indicate places where its forgiveable or even required to break the written rules.

One example I see in many large corporations is a written rule that only approved software can be installed on company computers. But at most of those companies, there was a shared understanding among the developers that they could really install any software they pleased. I have even worked at one company where several software packages which were critical to their infrastructure were not part of the official approved software list.

A Twofold path

It seems to me that to some extent, the twofold path of rules performs a valuable function in society. It can state an ideal which we strive towards, even though we only actually punish extreme aberrations. Consider many of our traffic laws: I've never known somebody to be arrested for jaywalking, but having a law against it sets things up so that if I get run over while jaywalking, it moves the presumption of innocence towards the driver. Likewise, we constantly break the legal speed limit in order to match pace with traffic, which the police usually tolerate. Within limits, it's simply a measure of sanity. No rulebook can possibly account for every real-life situation, and having a loose enforcement of less critical rules can be a mere acknowledgement of this reality.

But it seems to create a dangerous situation if the unwritten law and the written law diverge too far. In politics, it seems to form an easy path towards corruption. As I've read about recent difficulties in Venezuela and Myanmar, what struck me is that those countries aren't lawless because there aren't any laws. They are lawless because there are so many impossible, contradictory, rent-seeking regulations that it becomes impossible to run a business, to do much of anything in the public sphere, without breaking some kind of law. If the written law becomes a thicket of ambiguity and impossible demands, the only way to get anything done becomes to have friends who know their way around the unwritten law. Those friends can be acquired; all it takes is a few tokens of appreciation for their hard work as public servants...

Rule By Fear

I remember Toqueville pointed out that governments tend to impose disproportionately large penalties when they can't catch many of the guilty. In other words (think of the story of Robin Hood), if poaching the king's deer is a hanging offense, its a pretty good indicator that people are shooting the king's deer all the time. They are almost never caught, so on the rare occasion the king manages to catch one, he likes to "make an example of him". If everyone's guilty of breaking the laws, it's easy to find a pretext to string up anybody who makes trouble. Our constitution's prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishment" seems designed to prevent exactly these sorts of laws.

Having written rules which are never followed tends to make them even more Draconian. It seems like a quirk of human nature: Whenever you have a rule-giver or body of rule-givers who are not consulted as often as they feel they should be, on the rare occasion they are consulted they like to throw their weight around by saying "no". This makes people even less likely to consult them in the future. Since they are usually ignored anyway, there is little pushback against unreasonable new rules they create. In other words, if the written and the unwritten rules diverge too much, there seems to be an entropy that pushes them further apart.

In a corporation, I've seen an interesting danger arise: All it takes is for somebody in a position of influence to say, "I know we've been playing fast and loose with the rules for a while now. But that needs to stop. We are going to be following our rulebook to letter now, and enforcing compliance through audits" to completely shut the business down. Labor strikes can even take this form sometimes, where workers can effectively shut down the operation simply by following the rulebook to the letter. I've worked in one department which more-or-less garrotted itself this way. They got in trouble once for following the written rules too loosely. They decided to stop doing that, but their rules had become so onerous it made it impossible to get much of anything done.

In the End

At my current office, I'm certainly annoyed by some of the rules. We developers are fond of our tools. Most of us have a favorite way of setting up a computer for coding, which is unique to each individual. That company policy only allowing approved software means I have to make some compromises in how I set up my computer. It's a rule that could stand to be changed. But in the end, I can't help but approve of the philosophy of actually following their own rules.