Surrogation

Surrogation is a psychological phenomenon found in business practices whereby a measure of a construct of interest evolves to replace that construct. Research on performance measurement in management accounting identifies surrogation with "the tendency for managers to lose sight of the strategic construct(s) the measures are intended to represent, and subsequently act as though the measures are the constructs".[1] An everyday example of surrogation is a manager tasked with increasing customer satisfaction who begins to believe that the customer satisfaction survey score actually is customer satisfaction.

  1. ^ Choi, Willie; Hecht, Gary; Tayler, William B. (2013). "Strategy Selection, Surrogation, and Strategic Performance Measurement Systems". Journal of Accounting Research. 51 (1): 105–133. doi:10.1111/j.1475-679X.2012.00465.x.