Abstract: This paper provides an organisational analysis of governance by taking the rule practice in government construction projects as a case study. The study finds that in recent years, there have been a series of changes in the institutional environment, including a shift from focusing on efficiency to pursuing both efficiency and procedures, resulting in an increase of regulations and protocols in decision-making processes. These changes have to a great extent changed the traditional characteristics of "weak regulations and strong execution" and have formed a structural feature of "strong regulations and slow implementation", affecting the speed of task completion in local governments. Under the performance pressure of economic development, local governments have made full use of rules by meeting minutes and verbal commands within the established legal framework to soften procedural constraints for more efficient operations of local governments through simplifying processing, loosening prerequisites and supplementing secondary rules. Nevertheless, this multi-rule operation may induce three potential organisational tensions:the learning substitution of multiple rules, the recognitive conflicts of multiple rules, and the inherent tensions among bureaucratic personalities. Overall, the multi-rule operation is the product of changes in the institutional environment and the result of balancing the relationship between "tiao" (条, refers to the vertical line of authority over a particular sector) and "kuai" (块, refers to the horizontal line of authority over a particular locality) matrix of the unique Chinese bureaucratic system. This study sheds light on the flexible rules based on government meeting minutes and approvals, filling the gap in understanding the internal rule operations within Chinese bureaucracy.

Key words: regulation, legal rule, meeting rule, oral rule, governmental behavior