 Subjects -> SOCIOLOGY (Total: 553 journals)
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- Valuation Studies and the Drama of University Quality
Authors: Board of Editors
Pages: 1 - 4
PubDate: 2022-01-20
DOI: 10.3384/VS.2001-5992.2021.8.2.1-4
Issue No: Vol. 8, No. 2 (2022)
- Political Imaginaries of the Weighted Average Cost of Capital: A
Conceptual Analysis
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)
- A ‘Rule of Thumb’ and the Return on Investment: The role of valuation
devices in the financialization of Northern Australian pastoral land
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)
- (University) Management after Valuation Studies: Carving a practice
between the offended native, the anxious scholar, and the useless
practitioner
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)
- Evaluation and Merit-Based Increase in Academia: A Case Study in the First
Person
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)
- Valuation Ecologies and Academic Governance
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)
- “Islands of Qualities in an Ocean of Quantification”: A Conversation
with Wendy Espeland and Michael Sauder
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)
- Editorial Note: A Note on Transitions
Authors: Claes-Fredrik Helgesson
Pages: 1 - 6
PubDate: 2021-04-29
DOI: 10.3384/VS.2001-5992.2021.8.1.1-6
Issue No: Vol. 8, No. 1 (2021)
- ‘It’s not like any survey I’ve ever seen before’: Discrete Choice
Experiments as a Valuation Technology
Authors: Vicki Macknight, Fabien Medvecky
Pages: 7 - 31
Abstract: This paper unpacks what happened when members of the local community were invited to design and test a valuation tool – specifically a discrete choice experiment – to find a valuation for New Zealand’s Otago Peninsula. We argue that the assumptions that lie within a discrete choice experiment are revealed when we look closely at how community participants react to the discrete choice experiment survey they have helped design. These assumptions, usually unnoticed, include the necessity of making trade-offs; what actions are possible; the ‘reality’ of one’s preference structures; the need for abstraction; and the importance of big picture patterns. We also argue that how these assumptions are negotiated in practice depends on complex power relationships between researchers, participants, and the technology itself. While we might seek to ‘empower’ the community with knowledge of economic processes and valuation practices, this might not be the empowerment they seek. Participants find ways to be active negotiators in the face of valuation technologies.
PubDate: 2021-04-29
DOI: 10.3384/VS.2001-5992.2021.8.1.7-31
Issue No: Vol. 8, No. 1 (2021)
- Valuation Constellations
Authors: Désirée Waibel, Thorsten Peetz, Frank Meier
Pages: 33 - 66
Abstract: The focus on situated practices in current valuation studies becomes an obstacle when situations are too narrowly defined, when moments of valuation are treated as isolated events and especially when the interconnectedness of moments across situations and social fields is neglected. In order to overcome these limitations, we propose the concept of valuation constellations (Meier et al. 2016). Based on the literature on valuation the concept distinguishes positions and their relations, rules, and infrastructures. We present these three components of constellations and demonstrate the potential of the concept regarding three analytical puzzles of valuation analysis: historical change of valuation processes, the definition and solution of valuation problems, and the legitimacy of valuations. Each of the puzzles is illustrated with an empirical case, i.e. dating platforms and apps, higher education, and amateur reviewing. Going beyond situationalism, the valuation constellations perspective is key to understanding interconnected valuation processes.
PubDate: 2021-04-29
DOI: 10.3384/VS.2001-5992.2021.8.1.33-66
Issue No: Vol. 8, No. 1 (2021)
- Emotions and Valuations: Notre-Dame de Paris on Fire as a Case Study for
Axiological Sociology
Authors: Nathalie Heinich
Pages: 67 - 83
Abstract: The emotional reactions aroused by the fire that partly destroyed Notre-Dame de Paris in April 2019 can be analyzed as “valuations” in the light of the pragmatic sociology of values, since they provide empirically grounded material allowing for the description and modeling of the actual implementations and effects of valuations. After a quick summary of the recent history of the pragmatic turn in sociology as related to the sociology of valuation, and a short reflection on the relationship between emotions and values, the fire of Notre-Dame de Paris is used as a case study in the light of “axiological sociology”, a model built on value judgments observed in various contexts, including the display of emotions. This article intends to demonstrate both empirically and theoretically how important it is for the social sciences to consider values as an autonomous issue, deserving to be treated as “axiological facts”, as any other kind of social fact.
PubDate: 2021-04-29
DOI: 10.3384/VS.2001-5992.2021.8.1.67-83
Issue No: Vol. 8, No. 1 (2021)
- Three Modes of Valuation Practices in Art Games
Authors: Michael Hutter
Pages: 85 - 119
Abstract: Several suggestions on distinguishing between “modes” of valuation practices are found in the literature. In this contribution, valuation practices are moves in a kind of social play that generates its own kind of value. Valuation in the Arts is chosen as an empirical example. Following the model, the Arts are interpreted as a set of games with the same kind of value code, in which artists and producers create performances for engaged and curious spectators. The four kinds of players engage in valuations of objects and other players in their respective games. The broad range of observations in art games demonstrates that valuation is practiced in three modes: attribution, assessment and payment. While practices of attribution and assessment generate and stabilize art-specific value accumulation, paying practices link the attributed and assessed values to the monetary valuation in games of commercial play. The distinctions of valuation practices employed by three recent authors are set into relation to the suggested modes.
PubDate: 2021-04-29
DOI: 10.3384/VS.2001-5992.2021.8.1.85-119
Issue No: Vol. 8, No. 1 (2021)
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