Failure Under Formal Success - A Structural Account of Invisible Breakdown in Sociotechnical Systems

This paper introduces and defines failure under formal success, a structural failure mode observed in sociotechnical systems that satisfy explicit performance, compliance, or efficiency criteria while degrading the conditions required for sustained human participation. Rather than treating such cases as ethical failure, transitional cost, or unintended side-effect of optimization, the paper isolates a distinct configuration in which operational continuity and formal validation coexist with persistent deterioration of orientation, contestability, and continuity for participants. The analysis focuses on how dominant evaluative frameworks—particularly metrics, audits, and control regimes—can become structurally closed, rendering this form of failure weakly legible or invisible within standard diagnostic practices. The contribution is conceptual and diagnostic. The paper does not propose interventions, metrics, or normative prescriptions. Instead, it specifies the necessary and sufficient conditions of this failure mode, situates it relative to audit and metric governance, systems theory, and institutional theory, and clarifies why corrective intensification frequently amplifies degradation rather than resolving it. The concept of failure under formal success is proposed as an analytic category for examining breakdowns that persist under formal success conditions and for distinguishing these cases from ordinary malfunction, recognized crisis, or strategic failure.