Definition
The line a measure draws between what counts as part of a system and what is left outside it, treated as a decision someone made and could defend. Goodhart's law describes a measure corrupted once it becomes a target. The authored boundary comes earlier: before any metric is gamed, someone has decided whose work and whose losses the measure can see.
National accounts are the standard example. They count the rental value of a home its owner lives in as production and leave the unpaid care done inside it outside. Marilyn Waring's If Women Counted is the classic critique of that exclusion. A hospital that reports length of stay without the work its discharges move into households has drawn the same kind of line. The boundary does not have to be falsified to mislead. It works as drawn. The falsified denominator is what results.
Tests that show it is in place
- The measure states its boundary: which work and which losses it includes and which it leaves out.
- The record names who set the boundary and when it was last reviewed.
- Each reported improvement says whether it changed the outcome or moved a cost across the boundary.
Evidence to keep
- Artifact: A boundary statement for each headline metric, listing inclusions and exclusions.
- Behavior: A metric that improved while the excluded cost grew.
- Metric: Headline metrics with no stated boundary.
References
- Absorption as concealment · Theory