Adjective
of an approach to a problem that begins at the highest conceptual level and works down to the details
Source: WordNetThere are more effective ways of tackling environmental problems – including global warming, proliferation of plastics, urban sprawl, and the loss of biodiversity – than by treaties, top-down regulations, and other approaches offered by big governments and their dependents. Preston Manning
In the larger companies, you have this tendency to get top-down direction. Vint Cerf
I'm OK with procedural code, and the web is a top-down type of problem. It makes sense to me that you have HTML, you spit out a bunch of HTML, then you call a function to do something and then call another function. Rasmus Lerdorf
Our bickering wards in the Middle-East aren't about to forget their religious jealousies and join forces, certainly not under American guardianship. The conflicts are regional, tribal, ancient. They're impervious to outside, top-down intervention. Ilana Mercer
Nature is pretty good at networks, self-organizing systems. By contrast, social systems are top-down and hierarchical, from which we draw the basic assumption that organization and order can only come from centralism. Nicholas Negroponte
Top-down authority structures turn employees into bootlickers, breed pointless struggles for political advantage, and discourage dissent. Gary Hamel