This chapter examines how attitudes are formed. Attitude formation is explained as a function of prior beliefs and information. This process is viewed through two complementary lenses: the static process and the dynamic process. The static model thinks of attitudes as a combination of ratings and rankings. We term this the multi-attribute model – a commonly used approach in psychology and economics. The dynamic model concentrates on how humans process information, where things like words, symbols, and memory networks take on practical significance. Ultimately, both models have many applications for the practitioner.

In this chapter, we discuss both the structural and the packaging perspectives in conceptual terms. It is worth noting that the communications literature is diffuse and poorly integrated. Some of it reads more like self-help books. To be fair, it does draw on many different disciplines – some more rigorous; others less so. As such, our purpose here is to provide a clear framework for the pollster and practitioner. There is considerable art and creativity to effective communications. Look at Cannes Lion every year- the Oscars of the PR and Marketing world. There is incredible creativity in the crafting of impactful messages. But public opinion is public opinion – with a few basic compositional truths. By nailing them down, the pollster is able to provide structure to the communications process.

Straddling the line between knowledge and business, public and private, or between its local ties to the state and its reach toward the global economy of higher education, the modern university seems to have found in brands a tool to construct a coherent and attractive image, if perhaps only skin deep, of itself, its role, and its “excellence.” This chapter looks at the specificity of academic brands compared to their corporate counterparts, focusing in particular on the distinct notion of “origin” that they signify (and how that frames the ways in which such brands may be tarnished), the relationship between academic brands and academic rankings, and the fundamental role of students in the establishment of such brands. One of the suggestions put forward here is that, rather than an adoption of a corporate trend, academic brands may have in some way predated that trend.

Higher education misunderstands branding. Fears that embracing branding leads to commodification show the problem. When higher education institutions strive to meet ranking systems’ metrics, they take the path to commodification and cede power to outsiders. Branding, however, does not force such an outcome. Instead, applying the logic of branding to the realities of higher education today opens a way, especially for public institutions and systems, to define their purpose. This change can free schools from traps set by following systems that quantify education in the hope that it can be analyzed in economic terms. This chapter explains problems with ranking systems and examines California’s approach to higher education as a template for a broader understanding of education.

Goods are not only tangible things, like military hardware or trade goods, but may also be normative in nature. In this chapter, Rumelili and Towns emphasize the centrality of international symbolic and normative goods in maintaining or challenging hegemony. International orders may be characterized by different systems of supply of normative goods and status. They analyze the role played by ranking organizations and the country performance indices they produce in transforming norms into a set of normative goods. Such country performance indices provide moral value in three ways: They supply public and comparative information, which constructs moral hierarchies; they define norms by assigning moral value to specific indicators; and they distribute moral status to states through the ranking systems they employ. States may acquire normative goods to challenge the dominant position of the United States, or they may challenge the existing set of normative goods to undermine the liberal normative order that undergirds US hegemony. Conceiving of norms as goods alerts us to a distinct terrain where hegemony is challenged in a bottom-up and gradual fashion, through putatively technical measures and standards.

Globalization, accountability, and technology are changing important aspects of global governance. While coercion, enforcement, and material sanctions have often taken pride of place as major movers of interstate relations, scholars and policy agents alike have come to appreciate the multifaceted nature of power exerted more subtly and gradually.

The proliferation of global performance indicators (GPIs) is one example of such power. They contain ideas and worldviews, and they attempt to “regulate” through non-coercive but nonetheless powerful means. They do not merely measure qualities and practices in order to understand or inform, they pressure their targets to perform and conform. In wielding such tools, a diverse set of actors insert themselves in the governing process, in some cases even shifting policy parameters. When promulgated by authoritative actors, GPIs can name and categorize information in new ways and have what anthropologists like Merry and others have referred to as “knowledge effects,” or the ability to influence how people think about socially legitimate or best practice. Their proliferation and evolution define and contest what is worth knowing, measuring and achieving.

Do Global Performance Indicators (GPIs) influence the application of material power? While existing research has shown that GPIs can provoke reform through social mechanisms, material power is an important tool for influencing states resistant to social pressure. We investigate whether GPIs shape third-party policymakers’ decisions to employ material power in the fight against corruption, an important component of the good governance agenda. We theorize that GPIs influence policymakers by acting as focal points that provide information and establish standards of behavior. We test this argument for a highly visible GPI: Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. We find that while this GPI garners significant media attention, it does not influence policymakers’ decisions to punish corruption offenders by withdrawing or altering foreign aid. Our results raise important scope conditions on the power of GPIs and suggest that their ability to alter state behavior through third-party material mechanisms may be limited.

In recent decades, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs), private firms, and even states have begun to regularly package and distribute information on the relative performance of states. From the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index to the Financial Action Task Force blacklist, Global Performance Indicators (GPIs) are increasingly deployed to influence governance globally. We argue that GPIs derive influence from their ability to frame issues, to extend the authority of the creator, and – most importantly – to invoke recurrent comparison that stimulates governments’ concerns for their own and their country’s reputation. Their public and ongoing ratings and rankings of states are particularly adept at capturing attention not only at elite policy levels but also among other domestic and transnational actors. GPIs thus raise new questions for research on politics and governance globally. What are the social and political effects of this form of information on discourse, policies, and behavior? What types of actors can effectively wield GPIs and on what types of issues? In this introduction, we define GPIs, describe their rise, and theorize and discuss these questions in light of the findings of the chapters’ contributions.

The World Bank has successfully marshaled the Ease of Doing Business (EDB) Index to amass considerable influence over business regulations worldwide. This success is notable given that the Bank has no explicit mandate over regulatory policy and that questions linger about EDB accuracy and the policy trade-offs a high ranking requires. First, this chapter shows that the EDB has a dominating market share among business climate indicators. Second, it uses media analyses and observational data to show that EDB has motivated state regulatory shifts. States respond to being publicly ranked and some restructure bureaucracies accordingly. Third, it explores plausible influence channels for the EDB ranking. It uses an experiment involving US portfolio managers to build on existing economics research and examine whether the rankings influence investor sentiment within the experiment. It also uses a case study of India’s multiyear interagency effort to rise in the EDB rankings to show how politicians see the ranking as affecting domestic politics, altering investor sentiment, and engaging bureaucratic reputation. Overall, a wide variety of evidence converges to illustrate the pressures through which the World Bank has used state rankings to achieve its vision of regulatory reform.

This chapter provides a main argument for why business schools may be facing needs to fundamentally change perhaps more today than before. “New” pedagogy is available to make effective change happen, above all, so-called blended learning. But indeed several factors seem to slow down business schools’ capabilities and willingness to change, including a typically too strong focus on achieving favorable so-called ranking. It is the changing need of business itself, the key “customer”, that provides the main inputs for change, and the chapter concludes with a discussion of 10 such factors.