Who decides what counts and what gets counted?

When I first encountered Michel Foucault’s concept of veridictions several years ago, it was like having a new set of spectacles that caused me to look at the management processes, metrics and tools very differently.

I think that anyone studying or practicing management, or subjected to management processes, should familiarise themselves with the concept of veridictions. While the idea is not new and many will recognise veridictions within their work, it’s helpful to be reminded that the things we can often view as ‘truths’ within management, are usually socially constructed. And anything that is constructed, can be deconstructed, and reassembled another way.

What are veridictions?

A veridiction is something that holds truth according to a particular authority or worldview, rather than being independently or objectively true. Stories are veriditions - truths according to a perspective. The concept is intrinsically linked to the French philosopher, Michel Foucault, and his notion of ‘Regimes of Truth’. It’s been widely applied to political and social life, but veridictions also pervade the modern world of work. Verifications subtlety influence how we determine what we view as true or false, good or bad, or indeed acceptable and expected in work performance.

Management tools, such as metrics, evaluations, audits, procedures and performance goals contribute to what Foucault called managerial ‘truth telling’. They create define what we accept as true or false. If your role involves any form of evaluation, measurement, classification, prescription/proceduralisation, weighting/ranking, commensuration, assuring or verifying, then your work involves veridictions. We need these processes – in fact we cannot manage work without them. But we often overlook how subjective and arbitrary these processes are. Often we can be too close to them to recognise that what we’re looking at is not an absolute truth, but just a perspective. Foucault frames managements tools and processes through the lens of power/knowledge, subjectification and discipline, questioning who gets to decide what is measured, valued and rewarded.

Here's some common examples of verifications from the world of safety:

• Peformance criteria and definitions are veridictions because they define what is measured and presented as a single image of truth about an individual, activity or a team. Often arbitrary, they define what counts as ‘truth’ and what gets counted. Indeed, underpinning many of the ongoing discussions about the role of incidents in defining success in safety are deeply entrenched in Foucault’s concept of truth-telling.
• The procedures and instructions that organisations use to prescribe how work should be done. These define an accepted singular view of how to conduct a task, regardless of whether it is correct or practical.
• Audits and audit criteria are a form of veridictory truth that are imposed and accepted, often with little questioning over the validity or consequences of the methodology on individuals or particular groups. The consequences of finite, subjective and often very simplistic binary judgements of poor/improving or pass/fail can be significant for organisations and individuals. The mere recognition that these are a veridiction, not an absolute truth can prompt useful questioning.
• Investigations are another example. Only incidents that fulfil certain criteria are investigated and measured; incidents that do not are excluded. How we categorise and label ‘causes’ are another example. Veridictions will often pervade a whole management process and investigations provide a good example. This simplistic diagram is my crude attempt to show the influence of veridictions on incidents (apologies for using the term accident in the graphic).

These are four very simplistic examples and there are many more. Indeed, almost all components of management systems are veridictions. ?

So what?

Of course, none of this is new and you’re probably wondering so what... My point is not to dismiss representations and veridictions that we rely on. We cannot be omnipresent or live in reality of frontline work; we need representations and veridictions to manage.

But as we increasingly use more digitalised processes, Big Data, algorithms and automated decision-making to manage safety and keep people safe and healthy, we can easily be fooled into believing that what we are seeing is reality and truth. Too often metrics, audits, criteria and management processes are applied as absolute truth and not questioned.

Foucault’s concept of veridiction is a useful reminder that often what we’re looking at not an absolute truth, but a perspective and an interpretation. The concept of veridicton acts as ‘pinch/grain of salt’, remining us that most activities in management systems, metrics and processes are not scientific facts, but someone’s interpretation of truth. Just recognising them as a veridiction and considering who gains, loses, is affected or discriminated can be enough to open the mind and explore different perspectives. And greater discussion and transparency is surely a good thing?

If you’re interested in learning more about Foucault’s regimes of truth, check out this paper: https://www.genealogy-critique.net/article/id/7026/

This site provides an overview of Foucault’s main thinking: https://michel-foucault.com/key-concepts/#:~:text=Foucault's%20entire%20philosophy%20is%20based,various%20points%20in%20his%20career.

The book ‘Management Tools: A Social Sciences Perspective’ by Eve Chiapello and Patrick Gilbert does a great job applying Foucault to the modern world of work.?