Externality Internalization

batch: First Iteration/Batch 04/Wave 2

related_primes: accountability feedback measurement constraint justice

Boundary Critique

role: The intervention begins from the recognition that a decision boundary can hide costs, harms, risks, benefits, or responsibilities that matter to the larger system.

Externality

role: The target object is a spillover effect produced or influenced by one actor but borne, enjoyed, or managed outside that actor’s current decision boundary.

Holism

slug: holism

role: The intervention compares locally rational behavior with whole-system consequences and asks whether the local boundary is misaligned with the wider system.

Incentive Compatibility

role: The internalization rule changes costs, rewards, liability, reporting, or governance so local choices become more compatible with system-level outcomes.

Accountability

slug: accountability

role: Internalization requires some actor or institution to own the external effect, explain it, pay for it, reduce it, repair it, or report it.

Feedback

slug: feedback

role: The intervention creates a feedback path from external consequences back into the actor’s decision process.

Measurement

slug: measurement

role: Many internalization mechanisms depend on approximating effect magnitude, incidence, timing, and attribution well enough to guide action.

Constraint

slug: constraint

role: Rules, prices, duties, caps, disclosure obligations, or liability constraints make the previously external effect decision-relevant.

Justice

slug: justice

role: Assignment of costs and responsibilities must avoid shifting burdens to parties who did not cause, benefit from, or control the external effect.

components:
Externality Register
Affected-Party Boundary
Causal Attribution Model
Materiality Threshold
Cost or Responsibility Assignment Rule
Internalization Medium
Accountability Enforcement Anchor
Monitoring and Adjustment Loop
Equity Adjustment Guardrail
Appeal or Contestation Path
Lifecycle Scope Boundary
Benefit Recapture or Subsidy Path

mechanisms:
Full-Cost Accounting
Pollution Pricing
Carbon Pricing
Liability Rule
Extended Producer Responsibility
Impact Reporting Requirement
Risk Capital Requirement
Compensation or Restoration Fund
Tradable Permit System

essence_one_line: Redraw responsibility or cost boundaries so effects previously imposed outside the system are accounted for inside decision-making.

compression_statement: When a decision-making unit benefits by pushing costs, harms, risks, duties, or benefits outside its own decision boundary, internalize those external effects through pricing, liability, reporting, cost assignment, governance, or incentive rules so local choices account for wider system consequences.

core_intuition: Externalities persist because the actor making the choice does not directly feel the effect it imposes on others. Externality Internalization closes that feedback gap: it makes the spillover visible, assignable, and consequential to the actor’s own decision process. The point is not merely to widen awareness; it is to alter the boundary of accounting, responsibility, or incentive so the external effect changes behavior.

canonical_formula: externality_internalization = external_effect + affected_boundary + attribution_model + materiality_threshold + assignment_rule + internalization_medium + enforcement_feedback_loop

structural_problem: A decision-making unit excludes material costs, harms, risks, benefits, dependencies, or obligations from its own accounting or responsibility boundary, allowing locally rational choices to degrade outcomes for other actors, adjacent systems, future users, shared resources, or the whole system.

trigger_conditions: A local actor can create costs, risks, harms, burdens, or benefits that are borne outside its operational, financial, legal, metric, or governance boundary.

trigger_conditions: A product, policy, market transaction, platform rule, infrastructure decision, or organizational choice looks efficient only because downstream, upstream, social, environmental, or systemic effects are excluded.

trigger_conditions: Boundary critique or impact mapping has identified an externalized effect that is material enough to change responsibility, price, liability, reporting, governance, or design choices.

trigger_conditions: Current incentives reward production, growth, speed, convenience, or local savings while displaced consequences accumulate elsewhere.

trigger_conditions: Affected parties lack a direct channel to make the external effect visible or costly to the decision-maker.

trigger_conditions: Voluntary awareness, disclosure, or stakeholder consultation is insufficient because the external effect remains optional or consequence-free for the actor who can change it.

symptoms: The system reports success while pollution, maintenance burden, risk exposure, health costs, moderation labor, infrastructure wear, or future remediation appears outside the metric boundary.

symptoms: Costs are repeatedly described as someone else’s problem even though they predictably follow from the actor’s choices.

symptoms: Actors arbitrage jurisdictional, accounting, contractual, or organizational boundaries to avoid responsibility for spillover effects.

symptoms: Local optimization produces recurring complaints, lawsuits, cleanup costs, public backlash, systemic fragility, or hidden subsidy from an affected group.

symptoms: Existing measurement shows impacts but has no consequence for pricing, funding, governance, liability, investment, or behavior.

symptoms: A decision looks rational under the actor’s internal ledger but irrational once social, environmental, systemic, lifecycle, or long-horizon costs are included.

root_tension: The boundary that makes a local actor efficient can also make the wider system bear the actor’s unpaid costs or uncaptured benefits. The archetype manages the tension between bounded decision autonomy and system-level accountability by moving material spillovers back into the actor’s decision logic.

anti_signatures: The external effect has not yet been identified or made credible; use Boundary Critique Audit, Whole-System Impact Map, or Externality Mapping first.

anti_signatures: The move is only to redraw the analytical frame without assigning cost, liability, reporting, governance, or incentive consequences; use Boundary Reframing.

anti_signatures: The goal is broad local-global coordination rather than assigning specific spillovers to a decision boundary; use Whole-System Alignment.

anti_signatures: The issue is ordinary direct cost allocation among internal departments, not a spillover outside the decision boundary.

anti_signatures: The effect is immaterial, not attributable, not influenced by the actor, or already accounted for in the actor’s decision process.

anti_signatures: The proposed rule would punish a party with little causal role or little practical control while ignoring the actor who can actually reduce the external effect.

structural_intervention: Identify the external effect, locate who creates, benefits from, bears, or can reduce it, and move it into a relevant decision boundary through an assignment rule and binding internalization medium such as price, liability, obligation, report, reserve, design duty, governance rule, or incentive adjustment.

action_logic: Define the focal decision boundary: whose choices, metrics, budgets, legal duties, or incentives currently exclude the spillover effect.

action_logic: Record the externalized effect: its type, magnitude, affected parties, time horizon, pathway, evidence quality, uncertainty, and relationship to the actor’s decisions.

action_logic: Establish an attribution model that distinguishes direct causation, contribution, benefit, control, preventability, and shared responsibility.

action_logic: Apply a materiality threshold so internalization focuses on effects large or consequential enough to change decisions, not every remote consequence.

action_logic: Choose an assignment rule that specifies who bears cost, liability, reporting duty, mitigation responsibility, compensation duty, reserve requirement, or governance obligation.

action_logic: Select an internalization medium: price, fee, tax, permit, liability rule, reporting rule, full-cost account, insurance/reserve requirement, producer responsibility, governance review, or contractual obligation.

action_logic: Attach an enforcement or feedback anchor so the internalized effect actually changes decisions rather than remaining a symbolic disclosure.

action_logic: Monitor behavior and system effects, then adjust measurement, attribution, thresholds, or assignments when actors shift boundaries, game the rule, or externalities change.

decision_rules: Internalize when an excluded effect is material, attributable or influenceable, and decision-relevant enough that bringing it inside the boundary would change behavior, design, price, accountability, or governance.

decision_rules: Match the internalization medium to the causal pathway: use pricing for scalable measurable costs, liability for traceable harms, reporting for visibility and governance, producer responsibility for lifecycle effects, and capital/reserve requirements for systemic risk.

decision_rules: Do not internalize every possible consequence equally; use evidence strength, materiality, control, proportionality, and affected-party severity to prioritize.

decision_rules: When attribution is shared, use proportional, pooled, tiered, or governance-mediated assignment rather than pretending a single actor owns the entire effect.

decision_rules: When internalization would create regressive or unjust burdens, pair it with equity adjustment, compensation, transition support, or design alternatives while preserving the accountability signal.

decision_rules: Escalate to global review if the candidate becomes primarily an economic mechanism-design pattern rather than a boundary-and-responsibility intervention.

target_invariants: The internalized effect must remain tied to a real external consequence, not become an arbitrary fee or punishment.

target_invariants: The assignment rule should be proportional to causation, contribution, benefit, control, preventability, or governance responsibility.

target_invariants: Affected parties and affected systems should remain visible after the effect is converted into a price, liability, report, or rule.

target_invariants: Measurement uncertainty must be disclosed and managed rather than hidden behind false precision.

target_invariants: The intervention must preserve an enforceable feedback path from external consequence to decision-maker behavior.

target_invariants: Internalization should reduce spillover harm or improve system viability without simply moving the burden to less visible actors.

expected_outcomes: Local decisions account for social, environmental, operational, systemic, lifecycle, or downstream effects that were previously outside scope.

expected_outcomes: Actors who can reduce or prevent spillovers have stronger reasons to redesign, mitigate, compensate, report, price, or govern differently.

expected_outcomes: Hidden subsidies, displaced costs, and boundary arbitrage become harder to maintain.

expected_outcomes: Decision metrics become more aligned with whole-system viability and affected-party reality.

expected_outcomes: Externalized harms, risks, or benefits become governable because they are represented in rules, accounts, duties, prices, or oversight processes.

expected_outcomes: Boundary critique findings translate into binding accountability rather than ending as awareness only.

prose_essence:
Externality Internalization moves spillover effects back into the decision boundary of the actor whose choices create, benefit from, or can reduce them. The archetype applies when a local decision looks efficient only because costs, harms, risks, duties, or benefits are being carried outside the actor’s own ledger, metric, legal duty, or governance frame.

The central move is not simply “care about the whole system.” It is to change what counts for the decision-maker. A previously external effect becomes a price, liability, report, reserve, design obligation, governance duty, budget line, or accountability relation that can alter behavior.

prose_when_to_use:
Use this archetype when an actor can make choices that impose costs or risks on others while keeping those consequences outside its own decision process. Common triggers include pollution, waste, systemic risk, hidden maintenance burden, platform harms, downstream support load, lifecycle disposal, and public-health exposure.

It is especially useful after a Boundary Critique Audit or Whole-System Impact Map has already revealed the excluded effect. At that point, the problem is no longer only visibility. The next question is: who should have to account for this effect, through what rule, and with what consequence?

Do not use it when the external effect is still speculative, immaterial, unattributable, or already inside the actor’s decision boundary. In those cases, start with boundary critique, impact mapping, or scope definition.

prose_structural_problem:
The structural problem is a mismatch between the boundary of decision and the boundary of consequence. One actor makes the choice, but another actor, community, institution, ecosystem, team, user group, time horizon, or shared system absorbs the effect.

This makes local optimization misleading. A product can look cheap because disposal is somebody else’s problem. A financial strategy can look profitable because systemic risk is not on the trader’s ledger. A software release can look fast because downstream support and moderation costs are carried by another team. The hidden subsidy comes from whatever sits outside the current accounting or responsibility boundary.

prose_intervention_logic:
Externality Internalization first identifies the spillover and the boundary that excludes it. It then links the spillover to actors through causation, contribution, benefit, control, preventability, or governance responsibility. Once the effect is credible and material, the intervention selects a medium that brings it into decision-making.

That medium might be a price, a liability rule, a reporting requirement, a capital reserve, a producer-responsibility duty, a compensation fund, a budget transfer, or a governance obligation. The specific mechanism varies by domain, but the structural logic is stable: create a feedback path from external consequence to local decision.

The intervention must remain proportional and reviewable. Internalization fails when it becomes arbitrary blame, symbolic disclosure, false precision, or a cost that is simply passed to the people already bearing the harm.

prose_key_components:
### Externality Register

The externality register names the displaced cost, harm, risk, benefit, maintenance burden, or obligation. It records who experiences the effect, how it travels across the boundary, what evidence supports it, and how uncertain the estimate is. Without a register, the draft risks becoming a generic demand for accountability.

### Affected-Party Boundary

The affected-party boundary identifies where the spillover lands. It asks who is outside the deciding actor’s frame but inside the consequence field: residents, workers, users, maintainers, future users, ecosystems, taxpayers, counterparties, or adjacent teams.

### Causal Attribution Model

The causal attribution model explains why this actor should account for this effect. Attribution may be based on direct causation, contribution, benefit, control, preventability, or governance role. This component protects the archetype from becoming arbitrary punishment.

### Materiality Threshold

The materiality threshold decides which effects are consequential enough to internalize. It prevents infinite scope expansion while preserving effects large enough to change decisions, legitimacy, risk, or system viability.

### Cost or Responsibility Assignment Rule

The assignment rule is the heart of the intervention. It specifies how an external effect becomes a cost, duty, liability, reporting obligation, reserve requirement, design requirement, or governance responsibility.

### Internalization Medium

The internalization medium is the practical channel: fee, tax, full-cost account, liability rule, permit, disclosure requirement, capital charge, take-back duty, insurance requirement, contract clause, or governance review. Different media produce different behavior.

### Accountability Enforcement Anchor

The enforcement anchor makes the assignment real. It can be a regulator, court, contract, budget process, market rule, board review, reporting authority, insurance requirement, or public governance process.

### Monitoring and Adjustment Loop

The monitoring loop checks whether the rule changes behavior, reduces the spillover, creates gaming, shifts burdens, or needs recalibration. Internalization rules often change the system they regulate, so they must be revisited.

prose_common_mechanisms:
### Full-Cost Accounting

Full-cost accounting is a mechanism that adds hidden upstream, downstream, social, environmental, operational, or risk costs into a decision account. It implements the archetype when the added costs change budgeting, pricing, design, or governance.

### Pollution Pricing and Carbon Pricing

Pollution pricing and carbon pricing place costs on emissions, waste, depletion, or contamination. They are mechanisms for negative externality internalization, not the archetype itself. The broader pattern also covers liability, reporting, lifecycle duties, and risk buffers.

### Liability Rules

Liability rules internalize externalities by making actors responsible for harms beyond the original operating boundary. They work best when harms are traceable and adjudicable.

### Extended Producer Responsibility

Extended producer responsibility moves end-of-life effects back into producer decisions. It is a lifecycle-oriented mechanism: disposal, repair, recycling, or take-back costs influence design and pricing.

### Impact Reporting Requirements

Reporting requirements make external effects visible and reviewable. Reporting alone is not full internalization unless the report affects governance, investment, reputation, compliance, or decision criteria.

### Risk Capital Requirements

Risk capital requirements internalize systemic risk by forcing actors to hold reserves, capital, insurance, or guarantees for risks they create for others. They are especially useful when harms are probabilistic and catastrophic rather than routine and marginal.

### Compensation or Restoration Funds

Compensation or restoration funds collect resources from activities that create spillovers and use them to compensate affected parties or repair affected systems. They should not be treated as a substitute for prevention when prevention is feasible and ethically required.

### Tradable Permit Systems

Tradable permit systems internalize shared-system limits by setting a cap and allocating constrained rights. They work when a system-level limit can be defined and monitored.

prose_failure_modes:
Symbolic internalization occurs when the rule creates disclosure or a token fee without changing behavior. Misattribution occurs when the wrong actor is charged or blamed. Externality laundering occurs when actors comply with a narrow mechanism while shifting harms elsewhere.

False precision accounting occurs when uncertain or qualitative harms are converted into exact-looking numbers that hide uncertainty. Regressive burden shifting occurs when costs are passed to people with less control. Regulatory capture occurs when the responsible actors shape thresholds, exemptions, or measurements to preserve the old externalization.

prose_neighbor_distinctions:
Externality Internalization is distinct from Boundary Reframing. Boundary Reframing changes the analysis boundary; internalization assigns the excluded effect into a decision or responsibility boundary.

It is also distinct from Boundary Critique Audit. Boundary Critique Audit reveals the exclusion; Externality Internalization changes the accountability relation after the externality has been identified.

It is narrower than Whole-System Alignment, which can involve many part-whole coordination moves. It is also narrower than Incentive Alignment or Mechanism Design, because it specifically targets spillover effects outside the actor’s boundary. Cost-benefit analysis can estimate external costs, but it is not internalization unless actors must actually account for them.

prose_cross_domain_examples:
In environmental policy, emissions fees or carbon prices make pollution part of the producer’s decision calculus. In product lifecycle governance, take-back requirements make disposal and recycling part of product design. In financial regulation, capital requirements make systemic risk part of institutional cost.

In platform governance, moderation, appeal, researcher-access, or user-safety obligations can bring external harms created by platform design into operating responsibility. In organizational management, a project team can be required to carry downstream support and maintenance costs created by its launch decisions. In public health, exposure risks can be tied to reporting, remediation, penalties, insurance, or safety investment.

prose_non_examples:
A sustainability report that describes pollution without changing decisions is not internalization. A stakeholder workshop that hears concerns but creates no assignment rule is not internalization. A whole-system map that identifies consequences but does not create a price, duty, liability, budget, reserve, or governance consequence is not internalization.

A direct user fee for a service is not externality internalization unless it assigns a spillover effect that was previously outside the decision boundary. Punishing a convenient actor with little causal role or control is also not this archetype; it is misassignment.

prose_tradeoffs:
Internalization can increase prices, compliance burden, reporting work, litigation, and administrative complexity. It can also create measurement disputes and incentives to game the boundary. Strong internalization may be necessary, but it is not free.

The ethical tradeoff is especially important. Some harms should not be treated as merely purchasable. A price can make a harm visible, but it can also legitimize continued damage if not paired with limits, rights, remediation, or prevention duties.

prose_invariants_to_preserve:
The internalized effect must remain tied to a real external consequence. The assignment rule must be proportional to causation, contribution, benefit, control, preventability, or governance responsibility. Affected parties should not disappear once the effect is converted into a number, price, duty, or report.

The intervention must also preserve uncertainty awareness. External effects are often hard to measure. Approximation is acceptable; false precision is not. Finally, the rule must maintain an enforceable feedback path from consequence to decision.

prose_target_outcomes:
The desired outcome is that local decisions stop looking artificially cheap, safe, or efficient by offloading consequences elsewhere. Actors that can prevent, reduce, compensate, insure, report, or redesign around spillovers should have reason to do so.

Successful internalization reduces hidden subsidies, boundary arbitrage, displaced maintenance burden, systemic fragility, environmental harm, and unaccounted risk. It also gives governance systems a concrete handle for acting on boundary critique findings.

prose_parameter_dimensions:
The most important tuning dimension is the scope of effects: which costs, harms, risks, benefits, time horizons, and affected systems are included. A second dimension is attribution: whether responsibility is based on direct causation, contribution, benefit, control, or preventability.

Other parameters include materiality threshold, measurement precision, enforcement strength, internalization medium, pass-through controls, equity adjustments, review cadence, and whether the rule operates at the level of a product, actor, transaction, industry, jurisdiction, or system.

prose_variants_and_near_names:
Negative Externality Internalization is the familiar case: pollution, waste, risk, harm, or maintenance burden is assigned back to the source. Positive Externality Internalization rewards or supports beneficial spillovers that would otherwise be underproduced. Responsibility Boundary Internalization focuses on duties and accountability rather than price alone.

Lifecycle Externality Internalization extends the decision boundary across upstream, use-phase, maintenance, disposal, or long-tail consequences. Systemic Risk Internalization brings low-frequency, high-consequence risks into capital, reserve, insurance, or governance requirements.

Near names include internalize externalities, external cost internalization, social cost internalization, spillover accountability, and responsibility boundary internalization. Mechanism names such as full-cost accounting, carbon pricing, pollution pricing, liability rule, and extended producer responsibility should point to this archetype or its variants rather than becoming separate top-level archetypes in this batch.

Negative Externality Internalization

variant_type: subtype

short_definition: Internalizes harms, costs, risks, depletion, contamination, labor burdens, or maintenance costs that a local actor would otherwise impose outside its boundary.

distinctive_feature: The direction of correction is burden assignment: a cost or harm is moved back toward the actor who creates, benefits from, or can reduce it.

distinct_from_parent: The parent covers both negative and positive spillovers; this variant focuses on preventing or correcting displaced burdens.

still_same_parent_because: The causal logic remains the same: move an external effect into the decision boundary through a binding assignment medium.

use_when: The spillover is a burden or harm rather than a benefit.

use_when: The actor’s private decision calculus excludes costs borne by communities, ecosystems, downstream teams, future users, taxpayers, or shared infrastructure.

use_when: A corrective price, liability, duty, reserve, or governance rule can change behavior or fund remediation.

Externality Register

role: Records the displaced cost, harm, risk, or burden.

Cost or Responsibility Assignment Rule

role: Assigns the burden to a decision actor or governance process.

Accountability Enforcement Anchor

role: Makes the assignment binding.

Pollution Pricing

role: Adds cost to pollution-generating choices.

Liability Rule

role: Assigns responsibility for harms.

Compensation or Restoration Fund

role: Funds repair or compensation for affected systems.

example_domains:
environmental policy
public health
platform governance
finance
operations management

domain: environmental policy

example: A waste fee makes producers account for disposal costs.

domain: operations management

example: A project budget carries downstream support costs instead of shifting them to operations.

failure_mode: burden pass-through

cause: The actor transfers the fee to affected parties without reducing the source externality.

mitigation: Pair pricing with design requirements, equity safeguards, and monitoring.

failure_mode: symbolic penalty

cause: The charge is too small or too avoidable to affect behavior.

mitigation: Calibrate to material impact and review behavior change.

Positive Externality Internalization

short_definition: Internalizes beneficial spillovers so actors have reason to create, maintain, or scale benefits they cannot otherwise capture.

distinctive_feature: The assignment direction rewards or captures dispersed benefits rather than charging for dispersed harms.

distinct_from_parent: The parent covers any external effect; this variant focuses on beneficial spillovers and underproduction.

still_same_parent_because: The intervention still moves effects across the decision boundary so the actor’s choice accounts for a spillover.

use_when: A socially valuable activity is underproduced because the actor cannot capture enough of the benefit.

use_when: The spillover benefit can be recognized, rewarded, subsidized, procured, credited, or governed.

use_when: Free-riding or lack of value capture discourages investment in shared goods, knowledge, prevention, or restoration.

Benefit Recapture or Subsidy Path

role: Creates a return path for external benefits.

Affected-Party Boundary

role: Identifies who benefits from the activity.

Causal Attribution Model

role: Connects the actor’s activity to the broader benefit.

Subsidy or Credit

role: Rewards beneficial spillovers.

Public Procurement Commitment

role: Creates demand for socially beneficial production.

Shared Savings Contract

role: Returns some system-level savings to the actor who creates them.

example_domains:
public health
research and innovation
ecosystem restoration
energy efficiency

domain: public health

example: Vaccination support recognizes benefits to people beyond the vaccinated individual.

domain: building efficiency

example: A shared-savings contract rewards retrofits whose benefits accrue partly to tenants or the grid.

failure_mode: rent seeking

cause: Rewards are claimed without real additional benefit.

mitigation: Use additionality tests and outcome verification.

Responsibility Boundary Internalization

short_definition: Moves an excluded duty, risk, maintenance burden, remedy obligation, or affected-party claim into an actor’s governance or accountability boundary.

distinctive_feature: The internalization medium is a duty or accountability relation rather than a price alone.

distinct_from_parent: The parent includes price, liability, reporting, accounting, and governance; this variant foregrounds responsibility assignment.

still_same_parent_because: The intervention still brings an external effect inside the actor’s decision and responsibility boundary.

use_when: The displaced effect is not naturally priced but should be owned, reported, mitigated, reviewed, or remedied.

use_when: The main gap is accountability rather than marginal economic cost.

use_when: A policy, contract, org design, or governance forum can require action by the responsible actor.

Accountability Enforcement Anchor

role: Names the binding governance site.

Cost or Responsibility Assignment Rule

role: Turns a diffuse burden into an assigned duty.

Appeal or Contestation Path

role: Allows challenge and review of the duty.

Impact Reporting Requirement

role: Requires continuing visibility of the effect.

Remediation Plan

role: Specifies corrective action for assigned harms.

Service-Level Responsibility Clause

role: Assigns downstream operational burden to the originating decision unit.

example_domains:
organizational governance
platform governance
public administration
supply-chain responsibility

domain: platform governance

example: A platform must own appeals and moderation costs created by its ranking and enforcement choices.

domain: enterprise operations

example: A product team must budget for support burden created by launch decisions.

failure_mode: paper ownership

cause: Responsibility is assigned but no authority or resources follow.

mitigation: Attach decision rights, budget, enforcement, and review cadence.

Lifecycle Externality Internalization

short_definition: Internalizes upstream, use-phase, maintenance, end-of-life, disposal, or long-horizon effects into product, infrastructure, or service decisions.

distinctive_feature: The boundary shift is temporal and lifecycle-oriented, not only organizational or market-facing.

distinct_from_parent: The parent can internalize any external effect; this variant focuses on lifecycle phases excluded by the ordinary decision boundary.

still_same_parent_because: It still uses assignment rules and internalization media to make excluded effects decision-relevant.

use_when: The spillover appears before sale, during use, after disposal, or after the project team has exited.

use_when: Lifecycle impact mapping identifies material effects that need assignment into design, pricing, producer responsibility, or governance.

use_when: The sale, launch, or project boundary hides downstream maintenance, waste, safety, or remediation costs.

Lifecycle Scope Boundary

role: Defines which lifecycle stages are included.

Externality Register

role: Records lifecycle spillovers.

Materiality Threshold

role: Prioritizes consequential lifecycle effects.

Extended Producer Responsibility

role: Assigns end-of-life duties to producers.

Lifecycle Assessment

role: Supplies evidence about impacts across stages.

Take-Back Requirement

role: Requires recovery or disposal responsibility.

example_domains:
sustainable product design
infrastructure
construction
electronics
packaging

domain: electronics

example: A manufacturer funds take-back and recycling for devices after consumer use.

domain: infrastructure

example: A capital project budget includes long-term maintenance and decommissioning obligations.

failure_mode: lifecycle blind spot

cause: The rule covers only disposal but ignores upstream or use-phase burdens.

mitigation: Use lifecycle scope review and staged impact registers.

Systemic Risk Internalization

short_definition: Internalizes risks an actor creates for the stability, resilience, or solvency of a wider system that would otherwise absorb failure costs.

distinctive_feature: The externalized effect is a risk distribution or tail exposure rather than a routine marginal cost.

distinct_from_parent: The parent covers spillovers broadly; this variant foregrounds systemic fragility and risk buffers.

still_same_parent_because: The actor is still required to account for consequences that would otherwise fall outside its boundary.

Risk

slug: risk

use_when: An actor’s failure, risk-taking, or fragility can impose cascading losses on others.

use_when: The risk is low-frequency or systemic enough that ordinary direct pricing misses it.

use_when: Capital, reserve, insurance, stress-test, or governance requirements can make systemic exposure decision-relevant.

Causal Attribution Model

role: Links actor behavior to systemic risk exposure.

Risk Capital Requirement

role: Provides a financial buffer mechanism.

Monitoring and Adjustment Loop

role: Recalibrates requirements as risk changes.

Risk Capital Requirement

role: Holds capital or reserves against externalized risk.

Stress Test

role: Estimates exposure under adverse conditions.

Insurance or Bond Requirement

role: Creates a funding backstop for possible harm.

example_domains:
financial regulation
infrastructure safety
supply chains
cybersecurity
public health

domain: finance

example: A bank holds capital against systemic risk created by leverage and interconnectedness.

example: A vendor must maintain security controls or insurance because breaches impose costs on customers and networks.

failure_mode: risk migration

cause: Actors shift risky activity to less regulated boundaries.

mitigation: Monitor boundary shifts and apply consolidated risk views.

near_names:
Internalize Externalities
External Cost Internalization
Social Cost Internalization
Responsibility Boundary Internalization
Spillover Accountability
Polluter Pays Principle
True-Cost Accounting
Full-Cost Accounting


Face-Saving Directness Calibration

type: archetype

source: generated

batch: First Iteration/Batch 47

slug: framing

slug: consent

components:
Face Risk
Required Message
Clarity Invariant
Relational Context
Directness Level
Politeness Strategy
Agency Preservation
Evidence or Standard Anchor
Understanding Check
Relationship Monitor
Escalation Boundary
Private / Public Channel Choice
Cultural Norm Check
Repair Invitation
Sender Accountability

mechanisms:
Tactful Feedback Frame
Diplomatic Language
Refusal Script
Hedging with Clarity
Face-Saving Negotiation Move
Culturally Sensitive Request
Constructive Criticism Format
Private Channel Selection
Status-Preserving Attribution
Follow-Up Repair Check

essence_one_line: Balance clarity with relationship preservation when delivering requests, criticism, refusals, warnings, or conflict.

compression_statement: When a necessary message would threaten dignity, status, belonging, authority, or relationship if delivered bluntly—but would fail if delivered too indirectly—identify the face risk, define the clarity invariant, choose an appropriate directness and politeness strategy, confirm understanding, and monitor relational impact.

core_intuition: People do not only interpret what a message says; they also interpret what the message implies about their competence, standing, trustworthiness, autonomy, and relationship to the speaker. The archetype works by separating the message that must be clear from the avoidable status threat in its delivery, then designing wording, channel, timing, and follow-up so the recipient can understand and act without unnecessary humiliation or defensiveness.

canonical_formula: required_message + face_risk + relational_context → calibrated_directness + politeness_strategy + understanding_check → clear_action_with_preserved_working_relationship

structural_problem: A necessary message sits inside a relational hazard: direct delivery may embarrass, shame, threaten status, escalate conflict, or damage trust, while indirect delivery may obscure the action, refusal, criticism, warning, boundary, or decision that must be understood.

trigger_conditions: A person must give criticism, corrective feedback, refusal, disagreement, escalation, boundary-setting, or difficult news to someone whose dignity or status may be threatened.

trigger_conditions: Power differences, cultural norms, professional hierarchy, public exposure, prior conflict, or dependency make the same message more face-threatening than it would otherwise be.

trigger_conditions: An overly blunt message would likely trigger defensiveness, retaliation, silence, withdrawal, humiliation, or loss of future cooperation.

trigger_conditions: An overly indirect message would likely be missed, treated as optional, interpreted as false agreement, or require the recipient to infer the actual ask.

trigger_conditions: The speaker needs to preserve psychological safety or relationship continuity while still enforcing a standard, decision, boundary, or request.

trigger_conditions: The organization has recurring feedback, refusal, conflict, or escalation patterns that either damage relationships or avoid necessary clarity.

symptoms: People leave conversations reassured but unsure what action is required.

symptoms: Feedback is so softened that the recipient later says they did not realize there was a serious problem.

symptoms: A refusal is phrased so indirectly that the requester continues pressing because the no was not clear.

symptoms: Criticism is delivered publicly or bluntly, causing shame, defensiveness, or a breakdown in future coordination.

symptoms: Speakers rely on diplomatic phrases, jokes, hints, or passive voice to avoid owning the message.

symptoms: Recipients comply outwardly but disengage, retaliate, or stop surfacing issues because the delivery damaged dignity or trust.

symptoms: A team oscillates between conflict avoidance and harsh confrontation with no stable middle path.

root_tension: The underlying tension is between communicative clarity and social preservation. A message must be strong enough to create understanding and action, but the social form of the message can either preserve or unnecessarily attack the recipient’s dignity, status, autonomy, and relationship to the speaker.

anti_signatures: The main problem is that an utterance is being confused with a promise, command, consent, apology, or decision; use speech_act_clarification.

anti_signatures: The main problem is missing evidence, relevance, specificity, or sufficiency in an exchange; use cooperative_communication_repair.

anti_signatures: The main problem is a term, icon, or label being interpreted differently from its intended meaning; use sign_meaning_alignment or polysemy_disambiguation.

anti_signatures: The main problem is adapting jargon, language, or formality to an audience without a difficult-message face risk; use code_register_adaptation.

anti_signatures: The main problem is a legal, procedural, or governance dispute requiring adjudication; use procedural_fairness or a conflict-resolution archetype.

anti_signatures: There is no meaningful dignity, status, relationship, or defensiveness risk; simple direct communication may be sufficient.

anti_signatures: The message is manipulative, coercive, discriminatory, or unsafe; making it polite does not make it appropriate.

structural_intervention: Separate the necessary content from the avoidable face threat, define the minimum clarity that must survive, tune directness and politeness to the relational context, deliver the message through an appropriate channel and frame, confirm uptake, and monitor whether the relationship remains usable for future coordination.

action_logic: Name the required message before designing wording: what must be known, done, stopped, refused, corrected, or decided?

action_logic: Identify the face risk: what dignity, status, competence, autonomy, belonging, authority, or relationship might feel threatened?

action_logic: Define the clarity invariant: what would make the message unmistakable even after empathy, hedging, ceremony, or indirectness are added?

action_logic: Map relational context: role, power, trust, history, cultural expectations, urgency, privacy, stakes, and recipient vulnerability.

action_logic: Select a directness level and politeness strategy that preserve the invariant while reducing unnecessary shame or escalation.

action_logic: Anchor the message in shared standards, evidence, mutual goals, constraints, or decision authority rather than global personal judgment.

action_logic: Provide agency where possible: invite context, offer options, name support, allow repair, or distinguish negotiable from non-negotiable elements.

action_logic: Check understanding without undermining dignity: ask for next-step agreement, recap, or response rather than assuming polite acceptance equals comprehension.

action_logic: Monitor relational impact and repair if needed; if repeated noncompliance, abuse, safety, or legal risk appears, move to a more direct or formal escalation boundary.

decision_rules: Increase directness when consequences of misunderstanding are high, time is short, safety is involved, repeated ambiguity has failed, or formal accountability is required.

decision_rules: Increase face-saving support when the recipient’s status, public image, competence, belonging, or autonomy is at risk and extra support does not obscure the message.

decision_rules: Use private channels for corrective or embarrassing content unless transparency, safety, legal record, or collective accountability requires public communication.

decision_rules: Use shared-standard or impact framing when personal blame would add threat without improving action.

decision_rules: Use hedging only when uncertainty is real or when it reduces threat without weakening the required message.

decision_rules: If the recipient must act, include an explicit action, deadline, boundary, or decision; politeness cannot substitute for instruction.

decision_rules: If the message involves consent, refusal, or authority, verify uptake and avoid polite ambiguity that pressures compliance or masks coercion.

decision_rules: When severe harm, harassment, safety risk, or repeated violation is present, do not let face-saving delay protective action.

target_invariants: The required message remains understandable and actionable.

target_invariants: The recipient’s dignity is not attacked beyond what the substantive issue requires.

target_invariants: Politeness does not erase accountability, consent, safety, or boundary clarity.

target_invariants: The delivery is appropriate to role, power, culture, channel, and stakes.

target_invariants: Agency and possibility of repair are preserved where they are legitimate.

target_invariants: The sender owns the message rather than hiding behind vague hints, false consensus, or passive voice.

target_invariants: Follow-up confirms both understanding and the viability of future coordination.

expected_outcomes: Difficult messages are understood without unnecessary humiliation or escalation.

expected_outcomes: Requests, refusals, criticism, and boundaries produce clearer uptake and fewer repeated misunderstandings.

expected_outcomes: People remain more willing to ask questions, receive correction, disclose problems, and continue cooperation.

expected_outcomes: Power differences and cultural expectations are handled more deliberately.

expected_outcomes: Feedback and conflict systems become less avoidant and less brutal.

expected_outcomes: Relationships are preserved where preservation is compatible with truth, safety, and accountability.

prose_essence:
Face-Saving Directness Calibration is the pattern of delivering difficult content in a way that remains clear enough to guide action while avoiding needless damage to dignity, status, trust, or working relationship. It is not a synonym for being nice. The archetype applies when a message must be understood—criticism, refusal, request, boundary, warning, disagreement, consequence, or decision—but the way the message is delivered could cause shame, defensiveness, silence, retaliation, or loss of future cooperation.

The core move is to separate the content that must be clear from the avoidable face threat created by channel, timing, wording, public exposure, hierarchy, or cultural mismatch. Once separated, directness and politeness can be calibrated deliberately instead of defaulting to bluntness or avoidance.

prose_when_to_use:
Use this archetype when a necessary message has relational stakes. It fits performance feedback, negotiation, diplomatic disagreement, customer refusal, policy enforcement, clinical recommendations, classroom correction, community moderation, and conflict conversations where both clarity and relationship continuity matter.

It is especially relevant when the speaker is tempted to choose one of two bad defaults: say the message so bluntly that the relationship is damaged, or soften the message so much that the recipient never understands what is required. It is also relevant when hierarchy, public exposure, cultural norms, or prior conflict make ordinary directness feel more threatening than intended.

Do not use it to disguise coercion, manipulate consent, bury safety warnings, or avoid accountability. In urgent or harmful situations, face-saving may affect tone and channel, but it cannot override protective action.

prose_structural_problem:
The structural problem is a tension between **message uptake** and **face preservation**. The sender needs the recipient to understand a difficult action, boundary, refusal, criticism, or decision. The recipient also interprets the delivery as a signal about status, dignity, competence, belonging, autonomy, or respect. When that relational signal becomes too threatening, the recipient may defend, withdraw, retaliate, or stop engaging. When the sender overcorrects by becoming indirect, the required message disappears.

This is why the archetype is not merely about tone. Tone is one surface mechanism. The deeper structure includes the required message, face risk, relational context, directness level, politeness strategy, understanding check, and relationship monitor.

prose_intervention_logic:
The intervention begins by naming the required message before editing for tact. What must be known, changed, refused, stopped, accepted, or decided? Next, it identifies the face risk. Would the message threaten competence, public reputation, authority, autonomy, dignity, role identity, or belonging? Then it defines the clarity invariant: the part of the message that must remain unmistakable after any softening.

Only then does it choose the directness level and politeness strategy. The strategy might include private delivery, behavior-focused evidence, appreciation, shared-goal framing, alternatives, a repair invitation, or a more formal record. The message is then delivered with enough clarity to support action and enough face protection to preserve future coordination. The loop closes with an understanding check and relationship monitor.

prose_key_components:
- **Face Risk (`face_risk`):** Identifies the dignity, status, competence, belonging, authority, or self-image that could be threatened by the message or by the way it is delivered. Face risk is the structural reason this archetype is needed. It can arise from criticism, refusal, correction, request, confrontation, escalation, demotion, public exposure, cultural hierarchy, or loss of control. The component is not a politeness nicety; it names the relational hazard that could block uptake or cause harm.
- **Required Message (`required_message`):** States the content that must still be communicated: the request, feedback, refusal, correction, boundary, warning, consequence, or decision that cannot be softened into ambiguity. This component protects the archetype from becoming avoidance. A face-saving intervention fails if it preserves comfort by omitting the necessary action or standard. The required message should be specific enough that a recipient can know what is being asked, decided, corrected, or refused.
- **Clarity Invariant (`clarity_invariant`):** Defines the meaning, action, boundary, or consequence that must remain unmistakable regardless of how indirect, gentle, formal, or culturally calibrated the wording becomes. The invariant creates a floor under politeness. Hedging, empathy, framing, and honorifics may change the route of delivery, but they must not change the core message or make action optional when it is not optional.
- **Relational Context (`relational_context`):** Describes power, trust, role, history, cultural expectations, audience size, dependency, and stakes that shape how direct the message can safely be. The same words can be respectful in one context and humiliating, evasive, or coercive in another. Relational context determines whether the message should be private or public, brief or elaborated, formal or informal, self-owned or institutionally framed.
- **Directness Level (`directness_level`):** Sets how explicit, immediate, concrete, imperative, and unbuffered the message should be for the stakes, urgency, relationship, and recipient need. Directness is a tuning dimension, not a moral ranking. Higher directness protects speed, safety, and accountability; lower directness can protect dignity, autonomy, and openness. The selected level must fit the consequences of misunderstanding.
- **Politeness Strategy (`politeness_strategy`):** Selects the relational move used to preserve face while carrying the required message, such as appreciation, permission framing, shared-goal framing, choice architecture, private delivery, status-preserving attribution, or careful hedging. A politeness strategy is effective only when it supports comprehension and uptake. It should not disguise coercion, bury criticism, manipulate consent, or force the recipient to infer the message from vague hints.
- **Agency Preservation (`agency_preservation`):** Protects the recipient’s ability to respond, explain, choose among legitimate options, ask for clarification, or repair the issue without unnecessary shame. Agency preservation prevents face-saving language from becoming paternalistic or passive-aggressive. The design should preserve meaningful choice where choice exists, while clearly naming non-negotiable constraints where they exist.
- **Evidence or Standard Anchor (`evidence_or_standard_anchor`):** Connects the message to observable behavior, shared criteria, policy, safety standard, user impact, contractual obligation, or mutual goal rather than attacking the person’s character. Anchoring the message in evidence or standards reduces personal threat and increases fairness. This component overlaps with cooperative_communication_repair when the issue is evidence grounding, but here it primarily protects face while keeping the message direct.
- **Understanding Check (`understanding_check`):** Verifies that the recipient understood the required message, next step, refusal, criticism, or boundary rather than merely feeling reassured by the polite framing. The check can be a recap, decision confirmation, next-action agreement, teach-back, or explicit question. It must be designed carefully: over-checking can feel patronizing, while under-checking allows politeness to hide confusion.
- **Relationship Monitor (`relationship_monitor`):** Tracks whether the chosen directness and politeness balance preserved working trust, dignity, openness, and future coordination. Monitoring can occur through follow-up, behavior change, willingness to re-engage, absence of retaliatory silence, or explicit relational repair. It is not about pleasing everyone; it checks whether the delivery damaged the relationship more than the situation required.
- **Escalation Boundary (`escalation_boundary`):** Defines when face-saving indirectness is no longer appropriate because safety, legality, abuse, repeated noncompliance, urgent risk, or formal accountability requires direct action. This component prevents politeness from becoming complicity. Some situations require clear warnings, formal consequences, or protective intervention even when the message threatens status or comfort.

prose_common_mechanisms:
Each mechanism below is an implementation of the archetype, not the archetype itself. A diplomacy phrase, refusal script, or feedback format can help, but only when selected after diagnosing the face risk and clarity invariant.

- **Tactful Feedback Frame (`tactful_feedback_frame`):** A communication_template that Structures criticism around observable behavior, impact, desired change, and support while preserving the recipient’s dignity . This mechanism implements required_message, evidence_or_standard_anchor, agency_preservation, and understanding_check. It is not the archetype itself because the same calibration logic applies outside feedback.
- **Diplomatic Language (`diplomatic_language`):** A phrasing_family that Uses careful wording, acknowledgment, and shared-goal framing to communicate disagreement, refusal, or concern without unnecessary humiliation . Diplomatic wording is a mechanism under the archetype. The roadmap explicitly treats diplomacy_phrase as a mechanism, not a standalone archetype.
- **Refusal Script (`refusal_script`):** A script that Provides a clear no, boundary, or declined request while preserving respect and optionally offering alternatives, rationale, or next steps . A good refusal script protects the clarity invariant: the recipient should not have to infer whether the request was actually denied.
- **Hedging with Clarity (`hedging_with_clarity`):** A language_move that Softens interpersonal threat through calibrated qualifiers while keeping the required action, concern, or boundary visible . Useful hedging reduces defensiveness; harmful hedging hides the message. This mechanism must be governed by the clarity invariant and understanding check.
- **Face-Saving Negotiation Move (`face_saving_negotiation_move`):** A interaction_move that Allows parties to adjust positions, concede, or refuse without making the change look like humiliation, defeat, or incompetence . This mechanism is common in diplomacy, labor negotiation, customer escalation, and family systems. It should not be used to conceal substantive tradeoffs or manipulate consent.
- **Culturally Sensitive Request (`culturally_sensitive_request`):** A request_pattern that Adapts requests to local norms about hierarchy, formality, collective identity, indirectness, and obligation without losing the actionable ask . This mechanism overlaps with code_register_adaptation. Use it here when the main issue is face risk in a difficult ask; use code_register_adaptation when the main issue is audience language, expertise, tone, or register fit.
- **Constructive Criticism Format (`constructive_criticism_format`):** A feedback_format that Packages critique as behavior, consequence, standard, and improvement path rather than global judgment of the person . This mechanism helps preserve agency and psychological safety while still making the correction explicit.
- **Private Channel Selection (`private_channel_selection`):** A delivery_channel_choice that Moves a potentially humiliating correction, refusal, or warning into a lower-exposure channel when transparency does not require public delivery . Channel choice often does more face-saving work than wording. However, privacy must not be used to hide abuse, safety risks, discrimination, or decisions that require an accountable record.
- **Status-Preserving Attribution (`status_preserving_attribution`):** A framing_move that Attributes problems to constraints, shared standards, new information, process gaps, or change requirements when doing so is truthful and avoids unnecessary personal blame . This can reduce defensiveness, but it must not erase accountability. False attribution creates ambiguity and may undermine trust when discovered.
- **Follow-Up Repair Check (`follow_up_repair_check`):** A follow_up_protocol that Revisits the exchange after the difficult message to confirm understanding, relational repair, and next-step viability . Useful when the first exchange had high stakes, power imbalance, strong emotion, or risk of silent noncompliance.

prose_failure_modes:
Common failures include polite ambiguity, brutal clarity, compliment-sandwich confusion, false face-saving, over-accommodation, cultural stereotyping, and face-saving without follow-up. Polite ambiguity happens when the message is softened until action is unclear. Brutal clarity happens when someone treats harmful bluntness as honesty. False face-saving happens when polite wording hides coercion, unfairness, or manipulation.

The usual mitigations are to define the clarity invariant, anchor the message in evidence or standards, choose the channel deliberately, preserve agency where legitimate, check understanding, and escalate when indirect or face-saving approaches would increase harm.

prose_neighbor_distinctions:
This archetype is distinct from **Cooperative Communication Repair**, which repairs breakdowns in clarity, relevance, grounding, or sufficiency. Face-Saving Directness Calibration focuses on a different problem: the message may already be known, but its delivery threatens dignity or relationship.

It is distinct from **Speech-Act Clarification**, which asks whether an utterance is a request, promise, command, consent, apology, or declaration. Face-Saving Directness Calibration asks how to deliver that utterance without losing clarity or causing avoidable face harm.

It is distinct from **Psychological Safety Enablement**, which designs a broader environment for speaking up. This archetype works at the level of a specific difficult message. It is also distinct from **Code / Register Adaptation**, which adapts language and formality for audience fit; here the central tension is not audience comprehension but dignity risk around difficult content.

prose_cross_domain_examples: In management, a supervisor names a serious performance issue, explains the impact, asks for a change plan, and avoids public humiliation. In diplomacy, negotiators reject a proposal while preserving the counterpart’s ability to return with an alternative. In customer support, an agent refuses an unsupported request clearly while offering a permissible next step. In education, a teacher corrects a public mistake without making the student lose willingness to participate. In healthcare, a clinician gives a difficult recommendation while preserving patient agency. In community governance, a moderator enforces a rule while maintaining a path for appeal.

prose_non_examples: A vague compliment sandwich that hides the actual criticism is not this archetype. A harsh public takedown described as honesty is not this archetype. A legal or safety notice softened until rights or risks are unclear is not this archetype. A culturally stereotyped assumption about how a whole group prefers to be addressed is not this archetype. A polite phrase used to mask coercion or deny agency is not this archetype.

prose_tradeoffs:
More directness improves clarity, speed, and accountability, but can increase shame or defensiveness. More politeness reduces relational threat, but can hide urgency or consequences. Private delivery protects dignity, but can reduce transparency or shared learning. Public delivery supports accountability, but can humiliate people unnecessarily. Hedging can preserve openness, but can weaken a real warning or refusal. Agency-preserving options support acceptance, but can become false choice if the decision is already fixed.

The archetype must therefore include an escalation boundary. Some messages must become formal, immediate, or public because safety, law, repeated violation, or accountability requires it.

prose_invariants_to_preserve: The required message must remain clear. The recipient should not have to infer the real ask from hints, jokes, passive voice, or vague diplomatic wording. The recipient’s dignity should not be attacked beyond what the substantive issue requires. Politeness must not erase accountability, consent, or safety. The delivery must fit the actual relationship and power structure. The sender must own the message rather than hiding behind false neutrality. Follow-up must verify understanding rather than assuming that polite acceptance means uptake.

prose_target_outcomes:
A good application produces difficult messages that are understood and usable. Recipients know what is being requested, refused, corrected, warned, or decided. They also have a path to respond, repair, ask questions, or continue coordination without unnecessary humiliation. Teams using the archetype become less avoidant and less brutal: they can speak directly without making directness an excuse for harm.

In organizations, the outcome is often better feedback quality, fewer repeated misunderstandings, clearer boundaries, less defensive escalation, and stronger trust in conflict conversations. In public or cross-cultural contexts, the outcome is communication that respects dignity while still preserving important meaning and action.

prose_parameter_dimensions:
The main tuning dimension is **directness**: how explicit, immediate, imperative, concrete, and unbuffered the message should be. Directness should rise when misunderstanding is costly, safety is at stake, deadlines are near, or prior indirect attempts have failed.

A second dimension is **face support**: how much status preservation, privacy, empathy, shared-goal framing, and repair opportunity should surround the message. Face support should rise when the recipient’s dignity, role, public image, or future willingness to engage is at risk.

Other tuning dimensions include channel exposure, public versus private delivery, amount of rationale, level of formality, degree of hedging, availability of alternatives, amount of agency, follow-up intensity, and escalation threshold. The goal is not maximum politeness or maximum bluntness; it is a stable fit between message stakes and relational risk.

prose_variants_and_near_names:
- **Tactful Feedback Calibration (`tactful_feedback_calibration`):** Applies the archetype to feedback situations where critique must be clear enough to change behavior without humiliating the recipient.
- **Respectful Refusal Calibration (`respectful_refusal_calibration`):** Applies the archetype to saying no, declining a request, or setting a boundary while keeping the refusal unmistakable.
- **Diplomatic Disagreement Calibration (`diplomatic_disagreement_calibration`):** Applies the archetype to disagreement where preserving legitimacy, coalition, or future negotiation matters.
- **Culturally Sensitive Request Calibration (`culturally_sensitive_request_calibration`):** Applies the archetype when the face-risk and directness norms of a request vary across cultural, role, or community contexts.

Near names include face-saving communication, politeness calibration, directness calibration, respectful disagreement, constructive criticism, and respectful refusal. These should point to this archetype or to a named variant. Diplomacy phrases, hedges, refusal templates, and polite scripts should remain mechanisms unless they generalize into a broader intervention pattern.

Tactful Feedback Calibration

distinctive_feature: The required message usually involves observable behavior, impact, standard, and improvement path.

distinct_from_parent: It is a domain variant focused on feedback; the parent also covers refusals, conflict, negotiation, diplomacy, escalation, and requests.

still_same_parent_because: The structural problem remains the same clarity-versus-face tradeoff.

use_when: A person needs performance, behavior, or quality feedback that could trigger defensiveness or shame.

use_when: The sender must preserve working trust while still naming the gap, standard, or requested change.

domain: management

example: A manager names a missed deadline, describes impact, asks for a corrective plan, and avoids global character judgment.

domain: education

example: An instructor corrects a student’s reasoning error while preserving willingness to keep participating.

failure_modes: compliment sandwich obscures the real issue

failure_modes: soft wording leaves no actionable change

Respectful Refusal Calibration

distinctive_feature: The clarity invariant is a clear no or boundary, often with optional alternatives or rationale.

distinct_from_parent: It is a refusal-focused variant. The parent includes other difficult messages such as criticism, escalation, warning, or conflict.

still_same_parent_because: The core intervention still calibrates directness and face-saving strategies around a necessary message.

use_when: A request must be refused, but the sender wants to preserve respect, future coordination, or dignity.

use_when: Indirect refusal would invite repeated asking, while blunt refusal would unnecessarily damage relationship or status.

domain: customer support

example: A support team declines an out-of-scope request, explains the boundary, and offers an allowed alternative.

domain: negotiation

example: A negotiator rejects a term without insulting the counterpart or closing future options.

failure_modes:
soft refusal is interpreted as maybe
over-explaining invites debate
face-saving becomes false agreement

Diplomatic Disagreement Calibration

short_definition: Applies the archetype to disagreement where preserving legitimacy, coalition, or future negotiation matters.

distinctive_feature: The intervention emphasizes shared-goal framing, status-preserving attribution, and non-escalatory challenge.

distinct_from_parent: It is specific to disagreement and negotiation; the parent also covers feedback, refusal, and direct requests.

still_same_parent_because: It uses the same directness, face risk, and relationship-monitoring structure.

use_when: A party must challenge a proposal, interpretation, decision, or claim without making the other party lose status.

use_when: Open disagreement is necessary, but the parties need a path to continue cooperating.

domain: governance

example: A board member challenges a recommendation by separating respect for the team from concern about the proposed risk.

domain: community mediation

example: A mediator helps a group reject a proposal while preserving the proponent’s dignity.

failure_modes: status preservation erases accountability

name: Culturally Sensitive Request Calibration

distinctive_feature: The calibration depends heavily on cultural and register interpretation rather than only individual relationship.

distinct_from_parent: It is a cross-cultural/request-specific variant; the parent is broader.

still_same_parent_because: The intervention is still choosing a directness/politeness balance around a required message.

use_when: A request crosses communities with different expectations around hierarchy, obligation, refusal, direct critique, or deference.

use_when: A literal translation would preserve words but change the perceived respect, urgency, or authority of the request.

domain: multicultural team

example: A project lead adapts a deadline request so it is understood as firm without publicly embarrassing a counterpart.

domain: healthcare

example: A clinician gives a difficult recommendation through language that preserves family dignity while still naming the clinical risk.

failure_modes:
stereotyping cultural norms
over-softening urgent risk
assuming indirectness equals respect

near_names:
Face-Saving Communication
Politeness Calibration
Tactful Feedback
Diplomatic Phrase
Constructive Criticism
Respectful Disagreement
Indirect Request Design