This paper examines how contemporary institutions increasingly mistake quantification for judgment, producing decision systems that appear objective while generating suboptimal outcomes across economics, education, and diplomacy. It argues that excessive reliance on key performance indicators narrows managerial attention toward short-term outputs, shareholder- facing results, and efficiency targets, often at the expense of structural learning, institutional resilience, and long-term public value. In such contexts, continuous improvement models such as Kaizen may become counterproductive: instead of enabling meaningful reform, incremental optimisation can preserve defective systems by managing symptoms rather than confronting underlying design failures. The paper extends this argument to education, where data-driven governance and scripted forms of artificial intelligence risk diminishing teacher autonomy, professional discretion, and context-sensitive pedagogy by recasting educators as operators of pre-structured systems. A parallel dynamic is visible in diplomacy, where black-box systems may acquire undue legitimacy precisely because they are presented as technical, neutral, and evidence-based, even when they obscure political assumptions and displace interpretive judgment in domains requiring historical sensitivity and contextual nuance. Methodologically, the study adopts a comparative conceptual analysis across the three sectors, drawing on scholarship in political economy, educational governance, and digital policy. It proposes the concept of “architectures of judgment” to describe the interaction of cognitive bias, institutional incentives, and algorithmic authority. The central claim is that decision failure today is not merely human or technological, but infrastructural: it emerges when metrics, managerial incentives, and algorithmic systems reinforce one another’s blind spots.

Authors:
Milica Papić, Belgrade Youth Office, Serbia

About the Presenter(s)
Milica Papić is Director of the Belgrade Youth Office and Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Economics, University of Belgrade, and a doctoral student in Economics. Her interests include youth policy, public administration, and project management.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Monday Schedule

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