Valuation Practices Beyond the Global North: A Comparative Study of Organizational Dynamics in Emerging Economies
Valuation processes play a critical role in organizational dynamics, shaping decisions in areas such as member selection, project management, and competitive positioning. While the relationship between valuation and organization has been well studied in institutions of the Global North, limited research has been conducted on how these processes operate in local settings outside of this context. This paper seeks to address this gap by exploring the interplay of organizational structures and valuation practices in emerging economies. Drawing from case studies of organizations in South Asia, this research examines how local customs of valuation intersect with global structures, especially in fields subject to international rankings and transnational moral campaigns.
The analysis focuses on how non-Western organizations negotiate these global expectations, while simultaneously relying on localized, tacit practices of valuation, such as community perception and material exchanges. In doing so, the study highlights how practices like informal accounting, social capital, and cultural perception of value redefine conventional valuation models in these settings. Moreover, this paper contributes to the growing body of literature on transnational organizational sociology by arguing that valuation is not simply an imported process but is dynamically co-produced in specific sociocultural contexts. This study seeks to broaden the conversation on organizational sociology and valuation by considering diverse fieldwork insights from regions often underrepresented in global discourse, offering a more holistic understanding of how organizational valuation evolves across borders.