In exploring the ritualistic practices involved in audits and the decoupling of planning from operational risk, we found it useful to draw on Hu, Yeo and Griffin’s concept of deep and surface compliance.
They differentiate how people can simply comply with a procedure, tick a box or go through the motions, but without really achieving the goals of the process.
Deep compliance is a strategy to complete the task as intended by the organisational goal.
Surface compliance on the other hand is “complying with the intention and strategy to demonstrate compliance”; a type of surface acting.
See the attached images for descriptions of each.
While their conceptualisation focuses more on individual action, the surface / deep differentiation is also a useful lens for relating system behaviour. This is how we applied it in our auditing study.
You may also find it a useful lens for describing categories of work.
Ref: Hu, X., Yeo, G., & Griffin, M. (2020). More to safety compliance than meets the eye: Differentiating deep compliance from surface compliance. Safety science, 130, 104852.
Study link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2020.104852
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