Audited representation displaces actual performance as work’s real goal

Evidence

Inevitably, a short-circuiting occurs, and work becomes geared towards the generation and massaging of representations rather than to the official goals of the work itself. Indeed, an anthropological study of local government in Britain argues that ‘More effort goes into ensuring that a local authority’s services are represented correctly than goes into actually improving those services’. This reversal of priorities is one of the hallmarks of a system which can be characterized without hyperbole as ‘market Stalinism’. What late capitalism repeats from Stalinism is just this valuing of symbols of achievement over actual achievement. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 91

Categorization

• XREF: Strong resonance with the ‘ritual over information transfer’ note from communication theory in this same reading project — both treat official measures as ritualized symbols. — connects to: Audited work reshapes labor toward producing representations rather than outcomes — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 91; Audit culture makes symbolic representations of work displace actual work; Performance targets distort actual work toward what is measured — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 93 (+5 more)

Related

• Audited work reshapes labor toward producing representations rather than outcomes (similarity 0.95)
• Audit culture makes symbolic representations of work displace actual work (similarity 0.85)
• Audit targets reshape institutional activity toward whatever is measured (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Audited work reshapes labor toward producing representations rather than outcomes #corroborates (0.95) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 91
• Audit culture makes symbolic representations of work displace actual work #corroborates (0.93)
• Performance targets become ends in themselves wherever they are imposed #corroborates (0.88) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 93
• Performance targets distort actual work toward what is measured #qualifies (0.85) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 93
• Audit targets reshape institutional activity toward whatever is measured #qualifies (0.85) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 93
• Surveillance-based grading audits bureaucratic compliance, not actual performance #exemplifies (0.80) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 104
• Colonising metrics create new mentalities and incentives inside organisations, not just reporting burdens #corroborates (0.80) — Ève Chiapello, Financialisation of Valuation, 19
• Optimizing for stated goals produces monstrous outcomes #expands (0.72) — , The Braided Reading EPUB, 655