Counting, Control and Calculation: Reflections on Measuring and Management
探讨绩效测量系统的根本问题，分析计数、监控与计算的关系，并评价其社会后果，认为绩效测量工具的发展是创新、危机与改革的循环，不断扩展至社会与经济生活的新领域。
This article explores fundamental issues in performance measurement systems broadly conceived. Three key moments or themes are identified. First, the foundations of measurement in counting practices, and their inherent reductionism, are considered. Second, the relations between measurement and technologies of monitoring and control, such as auditing, are discussed. Third, first- and second-order measurement (meta-measurement) are distinguished, respectively as particular institutions of counting and data production, and as related dense networks of calculating experts operating on these numbers within specific cultures of objectivity. Finally, arguments about the consequences of performance measurement systems are evaluated, contrasting democratic enthusiasm for performance measurement control technologies with the view that they are some kind of ‘fatal remedy’. In place of a simple dichotomy of trust or distrust in numbers, the development of performance measurement instruments is argued to be a cycle of innovation, crisis and reform, which continually expands into new regions of social and economic life, and which expresses varying degrees of commitment to precision.