Organisation, Interaction and Practice: Studies in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis by Nick Llewellyn & Jon Hindmarsh

Author:Nick Llewellyn & Jon Hindmarsh
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Communication in Organizations, Conversation Analysis, Organizational Behavior
ISBN: 9780521881364
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2010-08-30T18:30:00+00:00

Cambridge Books Online

http://ebooks.cambridge.org/

Organisation, Interaction and Practice

Studies of Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis

Edited by Nick Llewellyn, Jon Hindmarsh

Book DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511676512

Online ISBN: 9780511676512

Hardback ISBN: 9780521881364

Paperback ISBN: 9780521300285

Chapter

6 - Orders of bidding: organising participation in auctions of fine ar

t and antiques pp. 119-139

Chapter DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511676512.007

Cambridge University Press

6 Orders of bidding: organising

participation in auctions of fine

art and antiques

C H R I S T I A N H E A T H A N D P A U L L U F F

Introduction

Auctions provide an institutional solution to the pricing and exchange of

goods and services of uncertain value. In turn, auctions raise a number of social and organisational issues and problems that have to be resolved by

participants themselves in and through interaction (Maynard 1988). For

example, an auction of fine art and antiques consists of a gathering of a

large number of people, in some cases several hundred, all of whom may

have an interest in purchasing the goods on sale if the price is right. The lots in which participants are interested and the price they are prepared to pay is largely unknown, both to fellow buyers and to sale room personnel. The auctioneer has to deploy an organisation that enables the poten-

tial contributions of multiple participants to be identified, elicited and co-ordinated so that the price of the goods can be maximised in a

transparent manner and sold to the highest bidder. The success of the

auction, the valuation and exchange of goods, is dependent upon the

participants’ belief and trust in the process – that no personal interest or connivance, on behalf of or by the auctioneer, vendor or buyer, has

falsely influenced the price and the eventual ownership of the goods. In

other words, the neutrality of the auctioneer and the auction house

We would like to thank all those auctioneers, assistants and buyers who so willingly allowed auctions to be observed and recorded and who more generally helped with the research. We would also like to thank Stephen Patten, Karin Knorr Cetina, Douglas Maynard and Dirk vom Lehn for their helpful comments and ideas

concerning the observations and issues addressed in this paper. We would also like to thank Jon Hindmarsh and Nick Llewellyn, who provided very helpful comments and editorial suggestions. The research of which this paper forms a part is undertaken as part of an UTIFORO, a project funded by the Engineering and

Physical Sciences Research Council. An earlier version of this paper was published in the British Journal of Sociology.

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Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2012

120

Christian Heath and Paul Luff

and the integrity of bids – that they are real bids representing actual

demand – are critical to the process being, and being seen to be, fair

(C. W. Smith 1990).

Despite the substantial corpus of research in economics and econo-

metrics (see for example Klemperer 2004; Menzes and Monteiro 2005;

Krishna 2002), as Haidy Geismar (2001: 28) suggests, there is a ‘dearth

of sociological writing about auctions’. There are a number of impor-

tant exceptions, in particular Charles Smith’s (1990) insightful

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