The Political Power of Experimentation in Data-Driven Organizations – Georg Rilinger

PLAMADISO Talk by Georg Rilinger (MIT Sloan School of Management) – 23 April 2026 || Organized by the Research Group "Digital Economy, Internet Ecosystem & Internet Policy" @Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society Title "When Less Testing Is More: The Political Power of Experimentation in Data-Driven Organizations" Abstract Data-driven decision making is often treated as a neutral method for guiding product development. Managers are expected to resolve disagreements and foster cooperation by appealing to "what the data shows." Yet in practice, data is rarely neutral and coalition building often requires strategic ambiguity rather than clarity. This raises a puzzle: how do managers forge coalitions with appeals to data when data is always contestable? Drawing on a year-long ethnography of Project MATCH, an initiative to redesign the matching system of the digital platform iLabor, we show that managers relied not on arguments about specific data, but on rhetorical appeals to the ideology of experimentation: the belief that structured testing would ultimately yield objective insight. We distinguish between rhetorical appeals to experimental authority, a strategy of deferral that postpones conflicts by suggesting that evidence still needs to be collected, and strategies of promise that suggest problems will be resolved through a process of experimental perfection. However, these rhetorical strategies succeeded only when experimental practice remained insulated from scrutiny. When experiments addressed core decisions and produced ambiguous results, scrutiny intensified, and violations to the experimental ideal became visible, undermining the credibility of the ideology. We call this the epistemic fragility of experimentation – the ideology of experimentation is most powerful when experimental practice remains peripheral to the conflicts it is meant to resolve. Joint work with Gretta Corporaal, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. Short Bio Georg Rilinger is an Assistant Professor of Economic and Organizational Sociology at MIT Sloan School of Management, where he holds the Fred Kayne (1960) Career Development Professorship. His research examines organizational, cultural, and political reasons why technocratic expertise — from Nobel Prize-winning market designers to financial regulators — so often fails to prevent market failures, drawing on archival research, interviews, and ethnographic methods. He is the author of Failure by Design (University of Chicago Press, 2024), winner of the Viviana Zelizer Prize for Best Book in Economic Sociology, and his work has appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, Socio-Economic Review, Theory and Society, and others. More about Georg Rilinger Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?... Stay tuned for future events: https://plamadiso.weizenbaum-institut.de Follow us on X: https://x.com/JWI_Digi_Econ Follow us on LinkedIn:   / plamadiso   Find all PLAMADISO Talks in our playlist:    • Plamadiso Talks   The Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society: https://weizenbaum-institut.de/