In this paper, we adopt a sociomateriality approach to investigate the relationship between commensuration and grand challenges. Specifically, we follow a multi-stakeholder partnership engaged in making the ‘health’ of a waterway system located in the Great Barrier Reef region commensurable, reifying it into a report card. Our findings show how ‘commensurating practices’ can define, regulate, and maintain what constitutes the grand challenge of water health degradation and what should be done in relation to it, while also “do nothing” as the data and the ratings depicted in the report cards are mostly ignored by those producing them and their stakeholders. Drawing on these insights, we reveal why and how divergent outcomes of commensuration arise in practice. Specifically, we uncover how actions of including and excluding data eventually coalesce into compromising accounts. These accounts can tie actors into ongoing efforts to alter the visual tool, even if the changes in question are ultimately ignored and sustain organizational lock-in. Our study offers key insights on the sociomaterial practices of making grand challenges commensurable which can indirectly help managers seeking to mitigate these problems.
