Authors:Anne K. Krüger, Sabrina Petersohn Pages: 11 - 46 Abstract: One could think that bibliometric measurement of academic performance has always been digital since the computer-assisted invention of the Science Citation Index. Yet, since the 2000s, the digitization of bibliometric infrastructure has accelerated at a rapid pace. Citation databases are indexing an increasing variety of publication types. Altmetric data aggregators are producing data on the reception of research outcomes. Machine-readable persistent identifiers are created to unambiguously identify researchers, research organizations, and research objects; and evaluative software tools and current research information systems are constantly enlarging their functionalities to make use of these data and extract meaning from them. In this article, we analyse how these developments in evaluative bibliometrics have contributed to an extension of indicator-based research evaluation towards data-driven research analytics. Drawing on empirical material from blogs and websites as well as from research and policy papers, we discuss how interoperability, scalability, and flexibility as material specificities of digital infrastructures generate new ways of data production and their assessment, which affect the possibilities of how academic performance can be understood and (e)valuated. PubDate: 2022-12-21 DOI: 10.3384/VS.2001-5992.2022.9.1.11-46 Issue No:Vol. 9, No. 1 (2022)
Authors:Philip Balsiger, Thomas Jammet Pages: 47 - 77 Abstract: Digital platforms act as new powerful intermediaries challenging existing market orders in many sectors. Algorithmically producing ratings and rankings often built from online consumer reviews, platforms are important players in the digitizing of valuation. This article asks how these new platform-generated valuations relate to other forms of valuation. It presents a qualitative case study of valuation in the hotel sector in Switzerland, drawing on interviews with professionals and a description of valuation categories on the Booking.com website. Going beyond the description of the opposition between online consumer reviews and traditional judgment devices, the analysis shows that valuation on the platform is based upon a permissive hierarchical integration of a plurality of valuation poles, with algorithmic valuation at its center. This destabilizes the evaluative landscape with regard to three issues: lack of transparency of the algorithmic ranking; weakening and even undermining of formulaic valuation; and the issue of singularization of the online offer. PubDate: 2022-12-21 DOI: 10.3384/VS.2001-5992.2022.9.1.47-77 Issue No:Vol. 9, No. 1 (2022)
Authors:Maria Arnelid, Katherine Harrison, Ericka Johnson Pages: 79 - 107 Abstract: This article looks at the implications of emotion recognition, zooming in on the specific case of the care robot Pepper introduced at a hospital in Toronto. Here, emotion recognition comes with the promise of equipping robots with a less tangible, more emotive set of skills – from companionship to encouragement. Through close analysis of a variety of materials related to emotion detection software – iMotions – we look into two aspects of the technology. First, we investigate the how of emotion detection: what does it mean to detect emotions in practice' Second, we reflect on the question of whose emotions are measured, and what the use of care robots can say about the norms and values shaping care practices today. We argue that care robots and emotion detection can be understood as part of a fragmentation of care work: a process in which care is increasingly being understood as a series of discrete tasks rather than as holistic practice. Finally, we draw attention to the multitude of actors whose needs are addressed by Pepper, even while it is being imagined as a care provider for patients. PubDate: 2022-12-21 DOI: 10.3384/VS.2001-5992.2022.9.1.79-107 Issue No:Vol. 9, No. 1 (2022)
Authors:Alberto Cevolini, Elena Esposito Pages: 109 - 139 Abstract: Algorithmic predictions are used in insurance to assess the risk exposure of potential customers. This article examines the impact of digital tools on the field of motor insurance, where telematics devices produce data about policyholders’ driving styles. The individual’s resulting behavioural score is combined with their actuarial score to determine the price of the policy or additional incentives. Current experimentation is moving in the direction of proactivity: instead of waiting for a claim to arise, insurance companies engage in coaching and other interventions to mitigate risk. The article explores the potential consequences of these practices on the social function of insurance, which makes risks bearable by socialising them over a pool of insured individuals. The introduction of behavioural variables and the corresponding idea of fairness could instead isolate individuals in their exposure to risk and affect their attitude towards future initiatives. PubDate: 2022-12-21 DOI: 10.3384/VS.2001-5992.2022.9.1.109-139 Issue No:Vol. 9, No. 1 (2022)
Authors:Nadine Arnold, Simon Dombrowski Pages: 141 - 170 Abstract: The qualities of standardised products are often perceived as naturally stable. This article scrutinises this perceived stability and investigates which aspects of standardised quality remain stable, and which change in the longer term. Our conceptual framework, anchored in the literature on standards and valuation studies, suggests that while standardised qualities appear to be stable over time and space, it is in these spatial and temporal dimensions of qualification that controversies and changes are expected. Empirically, we investigate the organic quality which has been maintained in the German mass market since the 1970s by the standard-setter Bioland. Searching our archival data for disruption that refers to events, which were interpreted by Bioland as reasons for adjusting the qualification, the data show that Bioland reacted swiftly to manifold disruption triggered by actors located along the production and distribution chain as well as outside it. Pooling Bioland’s responses, we identify four shifts in terms of the (1) meaning, (2) focus, (3) organisation, and (4) relationships of quality. Due to these long-term shifts, little except the name of the standardised quality remained stable. Thus, the article concludes that standardised qualification must be dynamic and changeable if it is to be stably relevant in markets. PubDate: 2022-12-21 DOI: 10.3384/VS.2001-5992.2022.9.1.141-170 Issue No:Vol. 9, No. 1 (2022)
Authors:Horacio Ortiz Pages: 5 - 36 Abstract: This article analyzes the formulation of the “weighted average cost of capital” in the manuals of two of the most influential associations of financial analysts. It focuses on the use of the formula as the discount rate to determine the “fundamental value” of listed companies using the “discounted cash flows” method, a cornerstone of the definition of “shareholder value” used in the finance industry worldwide. It shows that the choice of variables and their mathematical relations in the formula mobilize multiple, partly independent and contradictory epistemologies and ontologies. This multiplicity is assembled along political imaginaries concerning the relation between particular notions of the maximizing investor, the efficient markets and the sovereign state. The figure of the investor is considered the only legitimate agent to claim the “free” cash flows of the company, the efficient markets are considered the source of truthful representation of value, and the state is supposed to guarantee both the fair play between investors and a minimum revenue for money owners, to be extracted from the rest of society through the tax system. The formula thus legitimizes and renders self-evident power relations that sustain the global inequalities produced by the finance industry. PubDate: 2022-01-20 DOI: 10.3384/VS.2001-5992.2021.8.2.5-36 Issue No:Vol. 8, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Alexandra Langford Pages: 37 - 60 Abstract: Northern Australian pastoral land prices have become higher and more volatile over the last twenty years, raising concerns about the potential implications of the financialization of the industry. These prices are not inevitable results of market forces, but mediated and co-constructed by a range of actors using two valuation devices: the ‘Beast Area Value’, a ‘rule of thumb’ which emerged during the early development of the industry, and the ‘Return on Investment’, a tool widely used to compare financial ventures. The Beast Area Value treats land as a commodity whose value is derived from its physical characteristics, while the Return on Investment treats land as an asset whose value is based on its future income generation potential. This article describes how some pastoral companies are strategically combining these devices to earn capital gains through ‘speculative development’ of properties in ways that do not necessarily increase their productivity. It argues that pastoral land is often developed in ways more reflective of the valuation devices used in the region than of the realities of station management, representing a shift from competing in the sphere of production to competing in the sphere of valuation and implicating these devices in the financialization of Northern Australian land. PubDate: 2022-01-20 DOI: 10.3384/VS.2001-5992.2021.8.2.37-60 Issue No:Vol. 8, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:José Ossandón Pages: 61 - 72 Abstract: This text introduces this issues’ symposium: “A correspondence on (University) Management after Valuation Studies”. The text has two parts. The first introduces the dilemma, the question of whether valuation studies could, besides studying valuation in practice, inform better practices of valuation, and the method of the correspondence, to use situations in which researchers of valuation are also practitioners, namely, the management of quality in higher education, as the starting point to think the correspondence’s problem. In the second part, the author reflects on his own experience in a situation of valuation at work, and proposes three different personae for the student of valuation: the offended native, the anxious scholar, and the useless practitioner. PubDate: 2022-01-20 DOI: 10.3384/VS.2001-5992.2021.8.2.61-72 Issue No:Vol. 8, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Christine Musselin Pages: 73 - 88 Abstract: This article provides a reflexive account of the process of defining and implementing a mechanism to evaluate a group of academics in a French higher education institution. The situation is a rather unusual case for France, as the assessed academics are not civil servants but are employed by their university and this evaluation leads to merit-based salary increases. To improve and implement this strategy was one of the author’s tasks, when she was vice-president for research at the institution in this case. The article looks at this experience retrospectively, emphasizing three issues of particular relevance in the context of discussions about valuation studies and management proposed in this symposium: (1) the decision to distinguish between different types of profiles and thus categorize, or to apply the same criteria to all; (2) the concrete forms of commensuration to be developed in order to be able to evaluate and rank individuals from different disciplines; (3) the quantification of qualitative appreciation, i.e. their transformation into merit-based salary increases. PubDate: 2022-01-20 DOI: 10.3384/VS.2001-5992.2021.8.2.73-88 Issue No:Vol. 8, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:Kristian Kreiner Pages: 89 - 102 Abstract: University managers are forced to assume responsibility for more and more aspects of academic life. This essay focuses on academic publishing and how deans and department heads attempt to manage the volume and quality of publications at their university because others, including politicians and scholars, rate the quality and effectiveness of the university on their publication output. How managers assume and practice this responsibility for academic publishing may seem self-evident but proves to hide both paradoxes and loopholes. Reflections build on an empirical illustration derived from the adoption of a conventional publication strategy. The implementation of this strategy is fueled by a large dose of strategic expediency. However, such expediency incurs costs related to impression management when managers need to show a sense of command in response to a disappointing performance. Both material costs (time and money) and symbolic costs (demonstrating allegiance to an embarrassingly naive conception of academia) are incurred. Exactly because management is exercised on the premise of an embarrassingly naive conception of academia, the presumed coercive forces are exceedingly loose and ineffective. The room for value judgment at all levels of the university organization is not closed but rather enshrined (for good or bad) behind a façade of objectivity and factuality. PubDate: 2022-01-20 DOI: 10.3384/VS.2001-5992.2021.8.2.89-102 Issue No:Vol. 8, No. 2 (2022)
Authors:José Ossandón, Wendy Espeland, Michael Sauder Pages: 103 - 121 Abstract: In this interview, Wendy Espeland and Michael Sauder both reflect on their work on rankings, reactivity and commensuration, and think about the implication their sociological work could have on the practices of those dealing with rankings and their reactive effects. PubDate: 2022-01-20 DOI: 10.3384/VS.2001-5992.2021.8.2.103-121 Issue No:Vol. 8, No. 2 (2022)
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