Call for Papers
The distinction between the judgement or "assessment of value" (evaluation) and the identification of what produces value (valuation) is often ignored despite its crucial importance for unpacking the processes of human interactions (Vatin, 2013). Valuation is crucial to the social construction of evaluations (Fini et al., 2018), and actors' values is often what determine the nature and valence of the social evaluation they produce (Chen et al., 2012). Inversely, social evaluations can drive shifts in the values that drive behaviors (Roulet, 2019). It is assumed that both valuation and evaluation involve a great dose of subjectivity and biases, but we know very little about the similarities and differences between those two processes, and their complex relationship.
The ordering and hierarchy of values necessarily impact the way social actors evaluate each other to the point it is often seen as a fundamental source of inequality in modern societies (Lamont, 2012). For example, the way we value work influences the way we perceive the welfare state and unemployed individuals (van Oorschot et al., 2012). Research on the moral foundations of psychology show that humans are driven by moral impulse such as fairness and loyalty, ultimately driving their judgement (Haidt, 2012). Inversely, how do the social evaluations of practices and actors recursively affect deeply ingrained values? For example, when individual voices are marginalized, their values also become less central (Clemente & Roulet, 2015). How can values be themselves evaluated? Values, when they are beneficial to some stakeholder groups, can be instrumentally legitimized by these groups (Patriotta et al., 2011). How do actors approach values as a function of the social evaluation they can secure? We know for instance that actors may recognize the values of others to be positively evaluated and join the in-group (Jourdan et al., 2017).
Because evaluation and valuation are closely intertwined (Fini et al., 2018), studying their interactions could yield novel contributions to the field of organization studies. The field of social evaluations has burgeoned in the last two decades, but at the same time, it remains highly fragmented (Pollock et al., 2019; Roulet, 2020), and considering the alignment between valuation and evaluation has the potential to solve the existing definitional challenges (Bitektine, 2011). Uncovering the underlying values that drive evaluations can help us understand how evaluations diffuse within organizational and individual populations (Aranda et al., 2020). With the emergence of new phenomena fuelled by social media, such as conspiracy theories, fake news and the so called cancel culture, actors can use social evaluations of others to advance their own values and vision of the world (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017), punish opponents (Bitektine & Haack, 2015), or advance their private interests (Roulet, 2020).
Positive evaluations often mean adherence to dominant values (Heugens & Lander, 2009). But the deviance from existing values can paradoxically generate positive evaluations, because of the visibility and distinctiveness it generates (Roulet, 2020). Inversely, adherence to existing values may not always be rewarded, and playing with existing codes does not necessarily translate into positive evaluations (Fitzmaurice, 2017). In this sense, perfect objects or actors (i.e. those who adhere closely to the values of a field or group) can often be negatively evaluated, while imperfect ones (i.e. those who deviate the most from those values) can on the contrary receive positive evaluations.
The link between valuation and evaluation has been explored from a variety of perspectives, including not only institutional theory (Taupin, 2012; Clemente & Roulet, 2015) and stakeholder theory (Shymko & Roulet, 2017), but also classic sociological perspective such as Boltanski's & Thevenot's orders of worth (Thevenot & Boltanski, 2006; Reinecke, 2010) or Bourdieu's theory of symbolic and cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986; Lamont, 2012). Considering both valuation and evaluation and their interaction offers fruitful opportunities to develop those theoretical perspectives. While the orders of worth perspective can enrich the theoretical link between valuation and evaluation, this theoretical link can also inform established perspective in organization studies such as institutional logics (Thornton & Ocasio, 2008) or stakeholder theory (Freeman et al., 2020).
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How do individual, organizational and societal values drive social evaluations, from their production to their diffusion?
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To what extent can differences among actors and the consequences of those differences (i.e. inequality, gender imbalances, etc.) bias their evaluation?
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Can we attribute a price, monetary or utility value to social evaluations?
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How do values at the societal level and their cultural determinants influence the construction and the impact of social evaluations? How can institutions condition social evaluations?
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How can the way we produce social evaluations affect our norms and beliefs with regards to valuation?
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What are the implications of the interaction between valuation and evaluation for entrepreneurs? How do societal values affect the decision of individuals to become entrepreneurs? How do social evaluations influence the allocation of resources to entrepreneurs?
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Why and how do stakeholder groups legitimize institutions? By contrast, why and how do stakeholder groups stigmatize institutions?
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How do actors use social media to produce social evaluations to advance their values? How is social media used as a platform to revert changing social evaluations or to maintain the "status quo"?
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How can we mobilize Boltanski' & Thevenot's orders of worth to understand social evaluations? Inversely, how can the link between values and evaluations inform our understanding of institutional logics?
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How can cultural and symbolic capital act as a bridge between valuation and evaluation?
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The deadline for submission of short papers is Tuesday, January 11, 2022, 23:59:59 CET.
More information here EGOS - Short Paper Submission: Important Information - European Group for Organizational Studies
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Thomas Roulet
U. of Cambridge
Cambridge
00447852779106
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