What Do Metrics Do? A Review and Proposed Typology

Abstract

Metrics focus attention, and attention is typically scarce within modern life and organizations. Prior work is largely dichotomous in its treatment of metrics. On the one hand, some emphasize the benefits of metrics in augmenting human cognition, facilitating comparisons, and validating knowledge. On the other, others warn that metrics eliminate the richness of context, applies homogenization pressures and can distort their measurand in unintended ways. Because these studies draw upon a wide range of metrics operating in different settings, it is challenging to interpret these contrasting perspectives. Furthermore, despite their prevalence in the laboratory and in R&D departments, the role of metrics in scientific and technological innovation is largely overlooked in prior work. This paper aims to grapple with these two gaps in the literature by synthesizing extant work in management, sociology and economics to identify two dimensions that metrics can vary along in their use. Intersecting these yields a simple typology of four mechanisms that metrics can take on, and highlights when metrics might deviate from their intended purpose. This framework also allows for a structured exploration of the role of metrics in innovation.