Managers knowingly use quantitative indicators as quality surrogates despite acknowledged inference problems

Evidence

Even in such an apparently straightfOlward measure as the number of arrests made by police officers or the number of people treated in emergency rooms, we have no idea whether the arrests were made with care or that treatment met appropriate standards. Sophisticated !fianagement specialists acknowledge the problems of inferring quality from quantitative indicators. But this does not prevent them from using quantitative measures as surrogates for service quality or ignoring the problems of inference in their utilization. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1213