bottom-up

bot·tom-up

(bŏt′əm-ŭp′)

adj.

Progressing from small or subordinate units to larger or more important units, as in an organization or process.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

bottom-up

adj

(Industrial Relations & HR Terms) from the lowest level of a hierarchy or process to the top: a bottom-up approach to corporate decision-making.

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

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Adj.

bottom-up - of an approach to a problem that begins with details and works up to the highest conceptual level; "bottom-up parser"; "a bottom-up model of the reading process"

top-down - of an approach to a problem that begins at the highest conceptual level and works down to the details; "a top-down analysis might begin by looking at macro-economic trends"; "top-down programming"

References in periodicals archive ?

Everyone from commercial fishermen to renegade governors to energized Congressmen agree that time is of the essence when it comes to marine conservation, and they are working from the bottom-up to implement reforms.

Ocean rescue: can we head off a marine cataclysm?

You have to he responsive to that, and you can't do that if you're insisting on a bottom-up decision-making process where you have loads of research done around each issue and you're absolutely sure of the right thing to do when you pull the trigger.

The New Economy

So here's a suggestion for downsizing the military that the Pentagon's "bottom-up review" and Al Gore's National Performance Review missed: Abolish the service academies.