The act of redefining the conditions for victory or
completion of a task, either when
the original conditions for achieving them were met or whilst the person or group is busy working to achieve the current conditions, in order to prevent them from succeeding. Usually done with malice by a superior or peer looking to exclude or remove people from a group by portraying them as
incompetent of not completing the task they keep altering.
When Jake was close to finishing his training, his
supervisor who had always hated him started moving the goalposts by claiming that Jake needed four references of work
experience instead of two in order to
graduate, a condition that nobody else had to meet and with only one day left for the deadline. Jake didn't pass.