The Production of Value Opinions by Specialized Valuers: Practical Sense and the Enactment of Judgment*
基于62个访谈，研究艺术和房地产估值师如何通过四阶段过程构建价值意见，强调判断与“直觉”在估值中的作用，对会计和金融从业者理解估值实践有参考价值。
ABSTRACT This article explores how valuers construct value opinions. Although some implications of outsourcing valuation to valuers for accounting purposes have been highlighted in the literature, we add a valuer perspective complementing the accountant's standpoint in order to obtain a fuller picture of these ramifications. Drawing on 62 interviews, we study the role of judgment in valuation and find that judgment is largely tied with the sensemaking of valuers. By examining the valuation activities of art and real estate valuers, we show that these specialized valuers follow a similar valuation process which allows them to grasp how to go on with valuation . This four‐phase process starts and ends by situating the opinion in its specific valuation context and is centered on iterations between researching, analyzing, and relativizing comparable data that may be adjusted to connect with a sense of what the value should be. Overall, judgment is shown to be enacted based on a practical sense of conducting valuation that includes a “gut feeling” of what represents a plausible value. This study suggests that the valuer's input should be recognized as situated, sense‐contingent, and vulnerable to the underlying politics and risks tied to providing an opinion. Our results also point to stark differences between how valuers approach the use of judgment compared to how judgment is typically exercised by accounting specialists.