Emerging Indicators and Bureaucracy: From the Iron Cage to the Metric Cage

Abstract

ABSTRACT Among the New Public Management (NPM) tools that have been implemented, one of the most common is use of indicators. Many studies have argued that imposition of an indicator entails a bureaucratization process. But the scholarly debate on these instruments has been shaped by a vertical perspective and has been focused on the effects of top-down indicators on organizations at the local level. In this paper, we wish to lay the emphasis on an emerging indicator, constructed and used by the actors themselves within a local forest management unit. We wish to draw attention to the manner in which, at the micro-level, a performance measure is worked out. We argue that these emerging indicators place a new locus of power in the hands of rangers but, rather than emphasizing hierarchy and chain of command, such indicators do not contribute to development of a Weberian iron cage. In contrast, there appears a metric cage, a mix of pragmatic rationality (instrumental and communicative), non-fixed rules, and technical-normative authority.