Horacio Ortiz, a post-doctoral researcher at the CSI (Mines ParisTech) and a member of the PERFORMABUSINESS team, is in a long-term research mission in Shanghai. His research is concerned with the interaction between institutional settings, organizational issues, and methods of valuation and investment. These are dynamic processes that change with time and that are different from one setting to another, with multiple conflicts, crossings, hybrids and inventions occurring along the way. Horacio’s research is currently focused on China, with the aim of allowing for a comparative perspective with other settings.

Some of the questions explored are:

Institutional context:
–    What are the sources and the orientations of funds?
–    What types of operations are possible?
–    What kind of financial institutions exist, what are their relations of forces, their complementarities, their strategies and challenges?
–    What is the economic, social and political environment in which this takes place?

Organizational issues:
–    What are the businesses in which these companies are engaged?
–    What is the internal hierarchy and the distribution of responsibilities?
–    What is the relation with clients and commercial partners? How is it related to the internal organization?
–    Who uses which methods of valuation and investment for what kind of operations? Within which strategies?

Methods of valuation and investment:
–    What methods, models, formulas are used for which operations? According to which rationale?
–    What are the expectations and assumptions implied in the use of these methods?
–    What are the alternatives or the conflicts between methods?

Answers to these and comparable questions aim at contributing to the understanding of the reality of financial practices today.