a complex and rule-bound system, difficult to understand, and hard to administer
Example sentencesExamples
Teaching approaches are rarely static or rule-bound.
Classical and neoclassical methods were beginning to be seen as rulebound, overly strict, and not much like what real life is like.
Because of their size and complexity, rational-legal bureaucracies are much more rule-bound than the alternatives.
Here traders deal with one another in a market system that stretches back hundreds of years in its adherence to ancient rule-bound traditions.
This facility is very rule-bound, procedural, and hierarchical, with highly-trained professionals overseeing its operations.
Students should not expect this seminar to instill a rigid sense of rule-bound correctness, whether grammatical or formal.
Genre fiction is regarded as "lesser" art because it is seen not as an "expressive" attempt to capture the artist's original vision, but as rule-bound conformity to genre expectations.
In schools, public services and in our dealings with strangers, our rule-bound, box-ticking, risk-averse culture is designed to protect us from one another.
They are old-fashioned, rule-bound, bureaucratic institutions.
Fiction has to be even more rule bound because it is a harder kind of make-believe.
Gentlemen like Adams did not fit comfortably into this rule-bound world of specialization, division of labor, credentialing, and uniformity.
I must confess I did anticipate that his many years in the Civil Service would show that he might be rather rule-bound.
Most financial reporting systems are moving away from a rulebound to a principles based framework.
One of the general issues to be considered in this book concerns the question of whether the age of bureaucracy has now gone and less rule-bound organizations now predominate.
The actions and behaviors of uncaring nurses were rule-bound and super-efficient; these nurses appeared tense, and they avoided eye contact with patients.
A less rule-bound nation would shrug off such trivialities.
Almost paradoxically, the rule-bound sonnet form was seen as enabling sincerity and spontaneity.
Military careers spent in hierarchical, rule-bound, tightly controlled organizations are not necessarily the best preparation for accurately judging the fluid world of politics at home and abroad.
When the bonds that link citizens with their governors are stretched over ever greater distances and are ever more rule-bound and intolerant, they decay and snap.
The background of war and ecological crises will make society and architects more conservative and rule-bound.