Institutionalizing strategic blind spots: from substantive to symbolic accountability in performance systems
Paula Cristina de Almeida MarquesPurpose
This paper aims to examine how organizational performance architectures may unintentionally institutionalize strategic blind spots by progressively shifting accountability from substantive, learning-oriented control toward symbolic reassurance practices. It explains how systems originally designed to strengthen oversight, coordination and strategic learning may gradually stabilize dominant interpretations, reduce exposure to contradictory signals and inhibit adaptive organizational change. Rather than treating strategic blind spots as isolated managerial failures, the paper conceptualizes them as structurally reproduced outcomes embedded within routinized performance and accountability arrangements.
Design/methodology/approach
The study adopts a conceptual theory-building approach grounded in organizational analysis, performance management and accountability literatures. Using a process-oriented perspective, the paper develops a dynamic framework explaining how performance systems, reporting routines and accountability arrangements evolve over time to reinforce executive dominance, reduce sensitivity to disconfirming information and normalize symbolic forms of control. The analysis integrates and iteratively compares insights from multiple literature streams to identify the organizational mechanisms through which performance architectures shape strategic sensemaking, feedback dynamics and adaptive capacity.
Findings
The paper develops a processual model of blind-spot institutionalization demonstrating how: selective performance architectures progressively reduce the visibility of discrepant information; reporting routines increasingly prioritize narrative coherence and organizational reassurance over diagnostic challenge; and everyday accountability practices gradually suppress corrective voice, reinforce dominant strategic assumptions and normalize symbolic accountability dynamics. Together, these mechanisms transform performance systems from learning-oriented infrastructures into legitimacy-maintaining structures that privilege stability, coherence and executive reassurance over adaptive responsiveness. Over time, this transformation contributes to delayed problem recognition, increased organizational fragility and weakened adaptive capacity. The framework also provides a foundation for future empirical operationalization and highlights governance, cultural and structural barriers that may hinder the restoration of substantive accountability.
Research limitations/implications
This study is conceptual and does not rely on original empirical data. The proposed model is therefore theoretical and requires empirical examination across diverse organizational contexts. Future research could test, refine and extend the framework through longitudinal qualitative designs capable of tracing how symbolic accountability emerges, stabilizes and, under certain conditions, is disrupted. The model also invites comparative analysis across governance structures and institutional environments to assess how variations in executive centrality and oversight intensity shape the trajectory of performance system evolution.
Practical implications
This study offers governance actors a diagnostic lens for examining how performance systems are enacted rather than merely designed. Boards, audit committees and performance specialists should scrutinize not only the presence of metrics but how indicators are selected, framed and debated in review forums. Institutionalizing structured challenge, protecting dissenting voices and periodically reviewing performance architectures may help preserve substantive accountability. Rather than introducing additional metrics, organizations may strengthen adaptive capacity by reinforcing the dialogical and interrogative dimensions of existing control practices.
Social implications
By explaining how performance systems may institutionalize strategic blind spots, this study highlights broader societal risks associated with symbolic accountability. When organizations prioritize narrative coherence over diagnostic scrutiny, failures may be delayed, vulnerabilities obscured and stakeholder trust undermined. In sectors with significant public impact – such as healthcare, finance or public administration – such dynamics can affect service quality, resource allocation and institutional legitimacy. Strengthening substantive accountability within performance systems therefore has implications beyond organizational efficiency, contributing to more transparent, responsible and resilient institutional governance.
Originality/value
This study theorizes blind-spot institutionalization as a structural and processual organizational phenomenon rather than an individual managerial failure or isolated governance deficiency. Unlike existing perspectives centered on symbolic accountability, decoupling or impression management, the proposed framework explains how ordinary performance architectures and routinized accountability practices progressively institutionalize strategic blindness even in the absence of deliberate manipulation or managerial misconduct. By linking performance systems, accountability dynamics and adaptive capacity, the paper contributes to organizational analysis by demonstrating how control systems intended to support learning and coordination may paradoxically inhibit strategic adaptation and organizational resilience. The framework also offers diagnostic insights for organizations seeking to restore substantive accountability, strengthen adaptive responsiveness and support future empirical investigation of accountability dynamics.