Andrea Mennicken

Valuation and Calculation at the Margins

Valuation studies is an emerging field with visible momentum. This is evidenced not only by the existence of this journal. In 2015 alone, several edited volumes and special issues were published on the explicit theme of examining valuations and how things are made valuable (Berthoin Antal et al. 2015; Cefai et al. 2015; Dussauge et al. 2015; Kornberger et al. 2015). One common feature of the histories of valuation studies which has been mentioned in these and other contributions is that valuation emerges as a long-standing core concern for a diverse array of scholars, as varying as it is delimited: by time, geography, and/or academic discipline. A related commonality concerns the acknowledgement of multidisciplinarity. As a journal, Valuation Studies has taken a strong position on the multidisciplinary foundations of its authorship and audience. The journal has created a platform for exchange and debate among sociologists, anthropologists, accounting scholars, science and technology studies (STS) scholars, as well as students of organizations and information systems. Calculative infrastructures, which account for what is valuable, are important sites for probing into processes of valuation. Valuation Studies shares this interest in calculation with social studies of accounting, a neighboring field to which the authors of this editorial also belong. Accounting, Peter Miller (1998) has argued, is most

Einleitung: Fundstellen von Zahlenforschung

Zahlen und Rechenpraktiken sind in der Gegenwartsgesellschaft, ihren Organisationen, ihren Alltagswelten, in Wirtschaft, Politik, Massenmedien, Erziehung und Wissenschaft allgegenwartig. Jeden Tag werden wir mit Zahlen, z. B. in der Form von Prognosen, Preisen, Risikobewertungen, Kostennutzenanalysen, Schulnoten, Bilanzen, Sportergebnissen und Tabellen oder innerbetrieblichen Kennzahlen konfrontiert. Privates und offentliches Zusammenleben vollzieht sich in numerisierten Umwelten (Rose 1991). Gleichwohl findet man in den Sozialwissenschaften kaum systematisches Interesse daran, ob und inwiefern die massenhafte Mobilisierung von Zahlen, Messungen und Kalkulationen die Aufrechterhaltung sozialer Ordnung beeintrachtigt, abstutzt oder unterlauft. Auch die Diskussion uber organisiertes Rechnen, die im englischsprachigen Raum seit geraumer Zeit unter dem Oberbegriff des „Accounting“ gefuhrt wird (z. B. Hopwood/Miller 1994; Vollmer 2003a), ist weitgehend auf Spezialistenkreise beschrankt geblieben.

The Foucault Effect in Organization Studies

Since the establishment of Organization Studies in 1980, Michel Foucault’s oeuvre has had a remarkable and continuing influence on its field. This article traces the different ways in which organizational scholars have engaged with Foucault’s writings over the past thirty years or so. We identify four overlapping waves of influence. Drawing on Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, the first wave focused on the impact of discipline, and techniques of surveillance and subjugation, on organizational practices and power relations. Part of a much wider ‘linguistic’ turn in the second half of the twentieth century, the second wave led to a focus on discourses as intermediaries that condition ways of viewing and acting. This wave drew mainly on Foucault’s early writings on language and discourse. The third wave was inspired by Foucault’s seminal lectures on governmentality towards the end of the 1970s. Here, an important body of international research investigating governmental technologies operating on subjects as free persons in sites such as education, accounting, medicine and psychiatry emerged. The fourth and last wave arose out of a critical engagement with earlier Foucauldian organizational scholarship and sought to develop a more positive conception of subjectivity. This wave draws in particular on Foucault’s work on asceticism and techniques of the self towards the end of his life. Drawing on Deleuze and Butler, the article conceives the Foucault effect in organization studies as an immanent cause and a performative effect. We argue for the need to move beyond the tired dichotomies between discipline and autonomy, compliance and resistance, power and freedom that, at least to some extent, still hamper organization studies. We seek to overcome such dichotomies by further pursuing newly emerging lines of Foucauldian research that investigate processes of organizing, calculating and economizing characterized by a differential structuring of freedom, performative and indirect agency.

Accounting for values in prison privatization

Since the 1980s, in the UK, market oriented, private sector-based management and accounting frameworks have been introduced into the public sector in an attempt to increase efficiency in the allocation of financial and human resources, to enhance managerial accountability, and to aid experimentation with mixed public–private organization. At present, the UK has Europe’s most privatized criminal justice system. Of the current 119 prisons in England and Wales, the management of 14 has been contracted to private companies such as Sodexo Justice Services, Serco and G4S Justice Services (NOMS Annual Report 2014–15). The prison privatizations are part of wider processes of market oriented governmental reform. These reforms did not only affect private prison establishments, but also the public sector. They aimed at transforming the prison (public and private) from a rules-based, bureaucratic institution to a performance oriented, calculating organization.

Welt(en) regulierter Zahlenproduktion zwischen Globalität und Lokalität: Reflexionen zu globalen Standards in Rechnungslegung und Wirtschaftsprüfung

Standardisierung kann als eine notwendige Voraussetzung der Moglichkeit von Rechnungslegung und Wirtschaftsprufung betrachtet werden. Ohne Standardisierung waren sowohl Jahresabschlusse als auch Prufungsberichte nicht vergleichbar, nur schwer interpretierbar und — dementsprechend — lediglich von geringem Wert fur Investoren, Kreditinstitute, Unternehmensleiter oder Regulierungsbehorden. Insbesondere vor dem Hintergrund wirtschaftlicher Globalisierungsprozesse wird einheitlichen Rechnungslegungs- und Prufungsstandards zunehmend grosere Bedeutung beigemessen. Sie werden als wichtiger Bestandteil der Stabilisierung internationaler Finanzmarkte gesehen. Sie sollen helfen, unterschiedliche Regulierungsarchitekturen zu harmonisieren und dazu beitragen, Markteintrittsbarrieren zu reduzieren. Sie sollen den Fluss und Austausch von Finanzdienstleistungen beschleunigen und die internationale Anschlussfahigkeit von Unternehmen erhohen. Robert Roussey, der ehemalige Vorsitzende des International Auditing Practices Committee 1 , unterstreicht die Wichtigkeit internationaler Standards mit den folgenden Worten