The Quiet Infrastructuralisation of Managerial Judgment

Managers still judge. Yet, organizations talk less about the judgment itself. Many firms now route evaluation through metrics policies and AI-supported recommendations. They can hide value trade-offs behind the optimization rhetoric. This essay argues that managerial judgment has become a background infrastructure for organizations. It persists but becomes less visible and less owned. I use ‘backgrounding’ to describe how judgment becomes embedded in organizational infrastructure rather than exercised as an explicit managerial stance. I develop three moves. Proxy capture turns disputable judgments into targets and thresholds. Relocation moves judgment upstream into governance, model design, and policy. Residualization frames the remaining human judgments as noise that needs control. I then trace consequences for accountability, moral responsibility, and learning. I close with a diagnostic that helps scholars and practitioners locate judgment. The aim is simple. Make judgment speakable again so responsibility and learning remain possible.