The Calculus of control: metrics, morality, and the machinery of governance in pre-algorithmic optimization systems

While contemporary debates in AI ethics focus predominantly on machine learning, neural networks, and automated decision-making, this article argues that similar governance effects—behavioural shaping, displacement of human judgment, and the concentration of authority in technical artefacts—already permeate organisations through mundane managerial technologies. Drawing on mixed-method empirical research from Nigerian manufacturing contexts, we introduce the concept of algorithmic governance without algorithms to describe how Lean–Green optimisation systems function as socio-technical infrastructures that reshape power, agency, and ethical responsibility. Through dashboards, key performance indicators, and audit mechanisms, these frameworks transform sustainability from a moral commitment into a quantified output and reconfigure worker agency within constrained participatory regimes. Our findings suggest that governance is not merely a computational phenomenon but an organisational logic embedded in quantification practices themselves. This study extends critical AI ethics scholarship beyond digital technologies to examine the ethical-political foundations of optimisation systems that predate and precondition contemporary algorithmic management.