The Apparatus Audit
A Diagnostic Toolkit for the Sociomaterial Age
Move beyond "bad apple" blame games and learn how to map the entanglement, analyse the constraints, and test the consequences of your current systems.
We have travelled a long way in this series. We dismantled the idea that organisations are machines made of separate ‘people’ and ‘things’. We replaced that outdated view with an apparatus that describes a living, entangled mesh in which reality is cut by constraints and tested by consequences.
But theory is useless if you cannot use it on Monday morning. If your team is burnt out, or your strategy is stalling, or your departments are at war, then you need a diagnostic tool not a philosophy lesson.
The Framework
When you face an organisational dysfunction, do not ask "Who is to blame?" (The Bad Apple theory). Do not ask "What process is broken?" (The Machine theory). Ask: "How is the apparatus functioning?"
Here is the three-step audit to diagnose any problem.
Step 1: Map the Entanglement (The Scope)
Using Agential Realism ask who and what is intra-acting here to produce this phenomenon?
List the ingredients. Do not just list the people. You must list the Actants.
The Humans: (Roles, identities, history).
The Matter: (Software, forms, room layout, furniture, hardware).
The Artefacts: (Metrics, dashboards, policy documents, emails).
Step 2: Analyse the Cut (The Design)
Using constraints (Juarrero) ask how are these ingredients constrained?
Look for the two types of constraints.
Governing Constraints: What is physically or legally impossible? Are the walls too high (bureaucracy)?
Enabling Constraints: What makes the right behaviour easy? Are there ‘soft slopes’ guiding the flow, or is it a chaotic free-for-all?
Step 3: Test the Consequence (The Method)
Using Pragmatism, ask what reality is this apparatus enacting?
Look at the output.
The Reality: Not "What did we intend?" but "What actually happened?"
The Ethics: Is this reality moral? Does it serve the inquiry?
Case Study: The ‘Zombie Status Meeting’
Let’s apply the diagnostic toolkit to a classic problem. That of the weekly 1-hour status meeting that everyone hates, where nothing gets decided.
Step 1: Map the Entanglement
Humans: 12 Managers (bored), 1 VP (talking).
Matter: A long rectangular table (Enacts hierarchy). A projector screen at the head. Laptops open (Distraction machines).
Artefacts: The PowerPoint deck (The script). The Outlook Calendar invite (Recurring forever).
Step 2: Analyse the Cut
Governing Constraints: The ‘1-Hour’ block is a rigid wall. We fill the time even if we don't need it. The ‘Rectangle Table’ constrains eye contact—everyone looks at the VP, not each other.
Enabling Constraints: None. There is no constraint forcing decision-making. There is no constraint limiting the number of slides. It is a ‘low-constraint’ environment, which leads to entropy (boredom/noise).
Step 3: Test the Consequence
The Reality: 12 highly paid people lose 1 hour. Attention is fragmented. The ‘Status’ is reported, but no problems are solved.
The Verdict: The apparatus is false. It consumes energy but produces no pragmatist value.
Redesigning the Apparatus
We don't just say "Have better meetings." We physically re-cut the apparatus.
Change the Matter (New Materialism): Remove the chairs. Make it a Standing Meeting. (Actant changed).
Change the Constraint (Juarrero):
Governing: Implement a "No PowerPoint" rule.
Enabling: "The 15-Minute Timer."
Change the Inquiry (Pragmatism): The goal is not ‘Status’ (Reporting); the goal is ‘Unblocking’ (Action). The meeting ends the moment the blockers are listed.
Conclusion
At the start of this journey, we set out to see organisations as a massive list of entagled elements (managers, people, teams, strategy, culture, rules, metrics, trust). We have integrated them through agential cuts, apparatus, and the design of constraint regimes, while remaining accountable for the architecture we help design and fallible, recognising that these designs will be wrong and that we will forever be adapting them.
We have come to recognise that:
Strategy is a material hypothesis.
Culture is an entrained habit.
Rules are governing constraints.
Metrics are agential cuts.
They are all parts of the same whole. They are the gears, levers, and walls of the organisational apparatus. Your challenge now is to start seeing the whole and to recognise you are part of the entanglement, you are part of the cut, part of the apparatus.