Sociology Of Quantification Research Articles

In plain sight: Mechanisms of means-ends decoupling in impact investing

Impact investors are supposed to generate financial returns alongside social and environmental benefits. Increasingly, they must also measure these benefits as a form of performance management to provide robust evidence of impact. However, it is an “open secret” that because of inconsistencies and fragmentation in the applied means of impact measurement, ends are imperfectly met. In this article, we probe how and why means-ends decoupling occurs in impact investing in plain sight. We apply a qualitative and interpretative approach, drawing on 135 interviews and 102 documents gathered from impact investors. We find that impact measurement is not primarily used for performance management but plays a relational role between stakeholders. We uncover and conceptualize three mechanisms that drive decoupling between the ideal and actual functions of impact measurement, namely impact measurement as: (1) communication, (2) categorization, and (3) construction of the domain. We also find an important contingency: decoupling becomes more likely with increasing systemic opacity in an investment field. We outline contributions to the organizational decoupling literature and the sociology of quantification, and we show how the problems that arise from means-ends decoupling could be overcome.

Governing public investment in Europe: The politics of off-balance-sheet policymaking, the rise of Eurostat and contrasted regional policies in Belgium

This paper focuses on a neglected yet crucial feature of public investment policies in the European Union (EU): the politics of statistical harmonization and off-balance-sheet policymaking. Drawing upon the instrument-centred approach and the sociology of quantification and accounting, it refines the concept of ‘fiscal ecosystem’ by highlighting the controversial and evolving nature of the boundary between on- and off-balance-sheet recording. It is argued that the accounting aggregates giving effect to EU fiscal rules favour marketized and privatized modes of public service delivery, including ‘market-based but state-led’ off-balance-sheet investment tools such as public–private partnerships. However, the effectiveness of this policy has decisively hinged upon the work of harmonizing public finance statistics carried out by Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the EU. This contested process has led to acute power struggles between statistical agencies and governments, and a substantial increase of Eurostat’s power in the wake of the Eurozone crisis. The comparison of the two main Belgian regions highlights contrasting responses to this European strategy of governing (sub)national investment policies through fiscal rules and statistical harmonization: while Flanders has consolidated the financialization of its investment policy, Wallonia has so far opposed this trend. This demonstrates that although financialization of public investment is promoted by EU fiscal integration, it is not inevitable; governments do have some leeway to follow an alternative path. As Wallonia also benefited from extraordinary economic and political circumstances, it remains to be seen whether its distinctive investment policy will withstand rising interest rates and tighter fiscal rules.

Valuing soccer players: on the valuation dynamics of an online user community

PurposeThis paper studies the interactive valuation discourses of an online user community (transfermarkt.de) that seeks to determine market values for soccer players. Despite their seemingly casual nature, these values have featured in newspapers, transfer negotiations, academic research, and capital market communication – and have thus become reified.Design/methodology/approachThe paper employs netnographic research methodology to collect and thematically analyze a wide range of user entries on the platform. These entries are studied using theoretical insights from the sociology of quantification and valuation.FindingsThe analysis reveals how values are constructed in constant interaction between value-proposing users and value-justifying “experts.” This dynamic form of relational valuation positions players relative to one another as well as to actual transactions on the transfer market. In the absence of authoritative guidelines, it is this possibility and affordance for interaction that enacts a coherent valuation regime. The paper further reveals the platform's response to a disruptive event, which risked bringing the user-expert dynamics to a halt, requiring intervention from the platform to repair its valuation frame.Originality/valueThe paper responds to increased scholarly interests in the valuation of professional athletes. It contributes to the extant literature on valuation, first, by analyzing the dynamic valuation work that feeds into the social construction of values and, second, by studying platform participation and user interaction in a socially engineered online space.

The Unintended Consequences of Quantifying Quality: Does Ranking School Performance Shape the Geographical Concentration of Advantage?

In this article we investigate whether quantifying school performance can have the unintended consequence of increasing the spatial concentration of advantage. Combining research on residential segregation with the sociology of quantification, we argue that ranking school performance may induce affluent parents to sort into areas with higher-ranked schools. We explore this hypothesis by analyzing linked decennial census data from 1981 to 2011 to examine whether the introduction of league tables measuring school performance in the early 1990s in England affected the spatial concentration of advantage. We find that the introduction of league tables was associated with an increase in the geographical concentration of occupational class. Advantaged households containing children became more likely to move to areas with better-performing schools after the introduction of league tables compared to less advantaged households. Quantifying school quality has the unintended consequence of increasing the geographical concentration of advantage, potentially entrenching inequalities.

How university rankings are made through globally coordinated action: a transnational institutional ethnography in the sociology of quantification

How university rankings are made through globally coordinated action: a transnational institutional ethnography in the sociology of quantification

What does gross national happiness really measure? An immersive observation in Lamshey, Bhutan


 
 The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the Gross National Happiness indicator and the actual lifestyle of the people of Bhutan. Gross National Happiness is a macroeconomic indicator calculated in Bhutan. It was constructed in contrast to the Gross Domestic Product. Gross National Happiness is designed to guide the country's public policies. Using visual methods in anthropology, this study proposes an immersion in Lamshey, a village in Bhutan. The daily life of the inhabitants is then observed and analyzed with the way gross national happiness is measured. The sociology of quantification provides a framework for analysis that reveals important and new implications. Indeed, to bring together the experience of happiness as it is lived by the Bhutanese, it will be appropriate to distinguish three complementary "Gross National Happiness", according to whether it is measured, lived, or in its ethical dimension.
 

Policymaking to the test? How international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) influence repetition rates

ABSTRACT Do international large-scale assessments influence education policy? How? Through scripts, lessons, or incentives? For some, they all produce similar outcomes. For others, different assessment data, shaped by different designs, and mediated by international organizations’ (IOs) policy directives, prompt different policy decisions. For some, participation in these assessments may be linked to lower repetition rates, as per the policy scripts hypothesis inspired by world society theory. For others, assessments’ comparison strategies (age vs. grade) influence repetition in participating countries, according to policy lessons or incentives hypotheses, respectively inspired by educational effectiveness research and the sociology of quantification, and particularly the notion of retroaction. Fixed-effects panel regression models of eighteen Latin American countries (1992–2017) show that participation in assessments is associated with changing repetition rates in primary and secondary, while controlling for other factors. The findings show statistically significant differences between some assessment types. The conclusions spur new questions, delineating a future agenda.

Framing water as a financial risk: Reviewing the processes shaping a narrative

AbstractWater is increasingly framed as a financial risk in equity markets. This article illustrates that this framing must be understood as a new aspect of the wider history of the financialization of the water sector. Unlike earlier instances, where water‐related services, or water risks are the primary subjects to be financialized, water itself is here being reformed to fit market logic. This article reviews, unpacks, and analyses the factors that have enabled, reframed, and defined water as a financial risk. As such, the article goes beyond simply reviewing what has happened, but also presents a critical analysis of why and how, and the potential effects this may have. Drawing on advanced theoretical perspectives from the social sciences, specifically building on the constitutive nature of language, the role of expertise in the knowledge‐policy interface, and the sociology of quantification, it proposes that the reframing of water into a financial risk is not a value‐free exercise. Critically, it shows that the value of water, at least as it relates to company activities, could be reduced to only embody those aspects which, in quantitative terms can be shown to affect Return on Investment. To alleviate this reductive process, an ambitious multi‐ and interdisciplinary research agenda must be developed moving forward to ensure that the multiple values of water are recognized and accounted for in equity markets and beyond.This article is categorized under: Human Water > Value of Water Human Water > Water Governance

International Organisations and the Proliferation of Scientised Global Reporting, 1947–2019

ABSTRACT As novel instruments in global governance, international organisations’ (IOs) global reports have emerged in all policy sectors in the more recent period. Drawing on an original dataset of N = 363 editions from N = 95 explicitly global reports from the period 1947–2019, this study documents the rise of reporting and uses citation and content analyses to examine the changing role of science. Reporting based on scientific research and quantitative indicators increases over time and across all sectors, yet particularly striking since the late 1980s and most in sectors dealing with human development and the environment. Drawing on arguments from world society theory, the sociology of quantification and post-truth approaches, this work argues that while reports provide IOs with new legitimacy in science-based governance, their scientised and quantified nature is likely to make IO activities the target of antiscientific populist rhetoric and critical arguments about a reductionist interpretation of science.

Can Russian Research Policy be Called Neoliberal? A Study in the Comparative Sociology of Quantification

National research evaluation systems that use metrics for the assessment of academic institutions are usually regarded as exemplifying the same neoliberal model of governance that, with minor variations, is implemented worldwide. This essay argues, however, that despite apparent similarities, metrics are used for different aims in different national cases. It compares the use of figures in the UK RAE/REF, a prototypical neoliberal framework, with various schemas of assessment that have been used to evaluate Russian universities in recent decades. It argues that in the RAE/REF, the principal role of statistics is to solve ‘the lazy agent’ problem by creating a prisoner's dilemma for academic institutions, while in the Russian case, statistics serve to solve ‘the corrupt knower’ problem, preventing collusion between the assessor and the assessed. The essay concludes by putting forward some hypotheses on the origins of different approaches to quantification.

Measuring the gender pay gap: the complexity of HR metrics

PurposeThe literature on HR metrics does not address the political issues that surround the definition and interpretation of these metrics. However, the need for agreement about HR metrics between different stakeholders is underlined by the framework of the sociology of quantification. This research aims to complement the literature on HR metrics by studying the process of defining and interpreting appropriate HR metrics, focusing on the example of the gender pay gap.Design/methodology/approachA case study with interviews and participant observation is conducted on a French company.FindingsThe results show that HR metrics are essential to prove the existence of inequalities. However, there are disagreements between management, unions and gender equality referents concerning appropriate HR metrics and their use.Originality/valueContrary to the literature on the subject, which remains predominantly positivist and normative, this article sheds light on the political issues surrounding the definition and use of HR metrics and shows the importance of involving a range of actors (managers, unions and employees) in the entire process.

Measures and Their Countermeasures: Reflexivity and Second‐Order Reactivity in Quantifying Immigrant Integration

Sociology is inherently reflexive. It deals with actors who themselves are constantly engaged in sociological reasoning. Concepts from academic sociology are thus prone to enter and affect the very dynamics they describe. The sociology of quantification is particularly attuned to such paradoxical effects of “reactivity,” that is, measurements and categories altering observed realities. The article builds on these insights but extends them by adding one more iteration of reflexivity. Examining administrative integration departments in Germany that have implemented statistical indicators for measuring immigrant incorporation, it attends to a case where bureaucrats are themselves anticipating “reactivity” of the measurements they use. Integration officers fear that integration indicators may inadvertently reify and stigmatize the statistical category of first‐ to third‐generation immigrants, or “persons with a migration background.” Consequently, they engage in various counterstrategies to offset such effects. Most notably, they launch a counter‐campaign against negative connotations of migration background that their own measurements are reinforcing as they frame migration background as an asset for society. The article argues that this is an example of second‐order reactivity, a phenomenon as yet neglected in the literature: Officers alter reality in reaction to an anticipated reactivity of their own integration statistics.

Legitimising EU Governance through Performance Assessment Instruments

The article addresses the production of indicators as policy instruments in European public policy. It discusses the relevant literature on sociology of quantification and European public policy and applies this theoretical framework to the case of European judicial administration policy. Presenting the historical and institutional premises to the creation of two projects of judicial performance assessment by the Council of Europe and the European Commission, as well as their methodology, the article argues that the selection of indicators is a litmus test of debates over the strategies and institutional goals of the organisations proposing them. Connecting the previous analysis with the use of these instruments in the policy-making sphere, the article points out that evaluation tools in European policy, rather than serving merely as informative tools, produce empowerment side-effects in the policy arena for the organisations that developed them. In European judicial policy, indicators provide a sufficiently loose framework to solve vertical and horizontal cooperation problems at the international level, determine policy goals through the selection of areas of measurement and evaluation, and provide proof to influence local and national policy-makers over reforms either through lesson-drawing, persuasion or conditionality.

Techno-solutionism and the standard human in the making of the COVID-19 pandemic

Quantification is particularly seductive in times of global uncertainty. Not surprisingly, numbers, indicators, categorizations, and comparisons are central to governmental and popular response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This essay draws insights from critical data studies, sociology of quantification and decolonial thinking, with occasional excursion into the biomedical domain, to investigate the role and social consequences of counting broadly defined as a way of knowing about the virus. It takes a critical look at two domains of human activity that play a central role in the fight against the virus outbreak, namely medical sciences and technological innovation. It analyzes their efforts to craft solutions for their user base and explores the unwanted social costs of these operations. The essay argues that the over-reliance of biomedical research on “whiteness” for lab testing and the techno-solutionism of the consumer infrastructure devised to curb the social costs of the pandemic are rooted in a distorted idea of a “standard human” based on a partial and exclusive vision of society and its components, which tends to overlook alterity and inequality. It contends that to design our way out of the pandemic, we ought to make space for distinct ways of being and knowing, acknowledging plurality and thinking in terms of social relations, alterity, and interdependence.

Mass personalization: Predictive marketing algorithms and the reshaping of consumer knowledge

This paper focuses on the conception and use of machine-learning algorithms for marketing. In the last years, specialized service providers as well as in-house data scientists have been increasingly using machine learning to predict consumer behavior for large companies. Predictive marketing thus revives the old dream of one-to-one, perfectly adjusted selling techniques, now at an unprecedented scale. How do predictive marketing devices change the way corporations know and model their customers? Drawing from STS and the sociology of quantification, I propose to study the original ambivalence that characterizes the promise of a mass personalization, i.e. algorithmic processes in which the precise adjustment of prediction to unique individuals involves the computation of massive datasets. By studying algorithms in practice, I show how the active embedding of local preexisting consumer knowledge and punctual de-personalization mechanisms are keys to the epistemic and organizational success of predictive marketing. This paper argues for the study of algorithms in their contexts and suggests new perspectives on algorithmic objectivity.

Techno-Solutionism and the Standard Human in the Making of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Quantification is particularly seductive in times of global uncertainty. Not surprisingly, numbers, indicators, categorizations, and comparisons are central to governmental and popular response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This essay draws insights from critical data studies, sociology of quantification and decolonial thinking, with occasional excursion into the biomedical domain, to investigate the role and social consequences of counting broadly defined as a way of knowing about the virus. It takes a critical look at two domains of human activity that play a central role in the fight against the virus outbreak, namely medical sciences and technological innovation. It analyzes their efforts to craft solutions for their user base and explores the unwanted social costs of these operations. The essay argues that the over-reliance of biomedical research on “whiteness” for lab testing and the techno-solutionism of the consumer infrastructure devised to curb the social costs of the pandemic are rooted in a distorted idea of a “standard human” based on a partial and exclusive vision of society and its components, which tends to overlook alterity and inequality. It contends that to design our way out of the pandemic, we ought to make space for distinct ways of being and knowing, acknowledging plurality and thinking in terms of social relations, alterity, and interdependence.

The configurative agency of metrics in education: a research agenda involving a different engagement with data

ABSTRACT The increased use of quantitative education data is often regarded by scholars as evidence of the emergence of’governing by numbers’. These scholars ascribe major stakeholders such as the OECD and nation states agency as they produce, distribute and consume data, and respond to these with policy and management initiatives. This paper argues that metrics themselves have a configurative agency that affects education in terms of educational ideas and designs. The paper illustrates this point by analysing two cases of graduate employability metrics, each of which configures education differently, and discusses how the configurative agency of metrics can become the focal point of a different research agenda using distinct analytical concepts drawn from the sociology of quantification and new materialism. The paper concludes that such a research agenda can enable actors involved in the design and development of education to enter into a professional dialogue and engagement with education data, rather than merely dismissing it.

Measuring innovation space: numerical devices as governmental technologies

ABSTRACT The context of sub-national regions in Sweden is used to illustrate how rankings and indices operate as part of contemporary governing of space and territory. An empirical study of an index designed to measure the innovative capacity of these regions is presented to illustrate how such numerical devices are invoked as part of policy by providing policy-makers with a means to define reality, guide strategy and legitimize certain actions. Drawing on both the literatures of governmentality and the sociology of quantification, the construction of the index and its deployment into politics are examined with a focus on the performative aspects of mobilizing such technologies in governing. The analysis shows how an instrument intended as a learning tool for regions and regional policy-makers turns into a device through which power operates in the processes of marking, grading and commensuration, in turn reinforcing established orders among the regions. Following from this, it is found that such numerical devices are important governmental technologies that help relay and institute political rationalities. Therefore, they should be considered more carefully in any analysis of discourses of regional development, which is a field permeated by rationalities of innovation and competitiveness.

Local Actions, National Policies and International Knowledge: Family Planning and Statistical Practices in Taiwan (1949–1980s)

Summary Using an approach based on the sociology of quantification, this article illustrates how actors utilised statistics when importing family planning to Taiwan and exporting their experience to international policy makers. The functions of statistics—producing knowledge and making policies—assisted the implementation of international programmes in Taiwan, where any actions leading to a population decrease were prohibited in the 1950s. The Population Council and Taiwanese officials first secured the provincial government’s tacit consent by claiming the programme to be an experiment in general population policy rather than one focused on the insertion of intra-uterine devices (IUDs). They went on to win the central government’s endorsement in 1964 by presenting IUD insertions as tools for achieving the ideal population size for economic development. Finally, experts packaged and repackaged the Taiwan programme as a success by wielding locally-collected statistics, reframing the programme to fit the conclusions of international research at the time.

The Sociology of Quantification: Where Are We Now?

The Sociology of Quantification: Where Are We Now?