The phrase "a top down target" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used in contexts where you are discussing goals or objectives that are set from a higher level of management or authority down to lower levels within an organization.
Example: "The company has established a top down target for revenue growth that all departments must align with in their strategic plans."
Alternatives: "a hierarchical target" or "a directive target".
It destroyed the culture of care in the NHS by replacing it with a top-down, target-driven culture.
Understanding, valuing and enabling the people at the core of the government's work is becoming more important as it moves away from a top-down, target-driven world to one that is more local, more outcome focused and easier on the public purse.
Instead of a top-down global target set by scientific analysis, distributed between countries according to some formula of equity, countries will make their own bottom-up commitments, which may or may not - in fact, do not - achieve the global goal they have themselves agreed, so will need constant upward pressure to be revised.
The first problem has been to find a middle way between the old, cumbersome top-down target regime and the emphasis on competition promulgated by the Tories and, eventually, by Tony Blair.
Local government got wrapped up in Thatcher's battle against "enemies within", he says, then Labour under Blair went for "a really top-down, target-based approach, which led to another great wave of centralisation".
But the Health Department now highlights patient choice rather than targets as the way to chivvy along the NHS.Indeed independence can be seen as the logical step in a chain of recent reforms that mark Labour's retreat from the top-down target regime.
The campaign has two main parts – a top-down approach targeting major policymakers around the world, and a bottom-up approach aiming to make 1 billion people aware of diabetes and the campaign.
"To change [attitudes], this sort of top-down target is necessary," he says.
"Far from improving access, another top-down target will leave GPs less time with their patients and put more pressure on general practice.
This results in perseveration and attention continually being drawn to certain highly attractive (in the sense of behavioural salience, i.e. bottom-up saliency combined with top-down target object-based attention) locations.
What I do know is that rallying around a set of utopian, un-enforced, top-down targets seems to have worked in the places where development agencies, where we, mattered.
