Pretender: When Organizations Perform Competence Instead of Creating Value

Koichi Hiraoka

No a5fc6_v1, MediArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: This paper develops the concept of Pretender to explain a condition in which organizations increasingly prioritize demonstrating that they function properly over producing the substantive value those functions are meant to create. The idea originated from an everyday Japanese expression, gokko (ごっこ), loosely meaning “playing at” a role or activity. Here, gokko does not imply deliberate deception, incompetence, or conscious fakery. Rather, it points to situations in which management, expertise, reflection, adjudication, or organizational response becomes partially detached from its substantive function while retaining value as evidence that the function exists. To conceptualize this process, the paper distinguishes among Substantive Function, Competence Performance, and Evidence of Function, and defines Pretender Drift as the gradual shift by which Evidence of Function becomes more organizationally salient than Substantive Function. The framework is positioned in relation to goal displacement, ceremonial conformity and decoupling, means–ends decoupling, organized hypocrisy, impression management, organizational legitimacy, and the audit society. Its distinctive focus is not merely that means and ends become separated, but that practices may continue and even expand because they serve as evidence of competence, professionalism, control, fairness, or appropriate organizational response. The paper examines several levels of Pretender: Strong-Person Pretender, Managerial Pretender, Professional Pretender, Procedural Pretender, and Organizational Pretender. It further develops the Pretender Management Loop, in which expanded control creates new opportunities for observable deviation, which in turn justifies further control, and the Nested Pretender Structure, in which role-level, procedural, and organizational performances mutually reinforce one another. Finally, it considers how Voice, Silence, Adaptation, and Exit may shape the long-term reproduction of Pretender Culture through organizational selection. The argument is not against rules, formal procedures, professional standards, audits, training, or discipline. The central question is whether these forms remain connected to the outcomes they were created to produce. Pretender begins when proving that work was done becomes more important than asking what the work actually made better.

Date: 2026-10-08
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:mediar:a5fc6_v1

DOI: 10.33767/osf.io/a5fc6_v1

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