Shows how global ratings and rankings shape political agendas and influence states' behavior, reframing how we think about power.

This highly accessible book investigates the rankings that increasingly influence perceptions of countries' governance and civil rights.

Indicators and rankings are widely used by governments and organisations to assess the effectiveness, efficiency, and success of policy decisions. This book evaluates the creation of indicators, their impact on policy decisions, and the implications of their use.

The twenty-first century has seen a further dramatic increase in the use of quantitative knowledge for governing social life after its explosion in the 1980s. Indicators and rankings play an increasing role in the way governmental and non-governmental organizations distribute attention, make decisions, and allocate scarce resources. Quantitative knowledge promises to be more objective and straightforward as well as more transparent and open for public debate than qualitative knowledge, thus producing more democratic decision-making. However, we know little about the social processes through which this knowledge is constituted nor its effects. Understanding how such numeric knowledge is produced and used is increasingly important as proliferating technologies of quantification alter modes of knowing in subtle and often unrecognized ways. This book explores the implications of the global multiplication of indicators as a specific technology of numeric knowledge production used in governance.

Breathtaking in its simplicity and profound in its impact, Key Performance Indicators (KPI) distills the balanced scorecard process into twelve logical steps, equipping users with an implementation resource kit that includes questionnaires, worksheets, workshop outlines, and a list of over 500 performance measures. Author David Parmenter provides you with everything you need to master and implement a KPI-driven strategy.

What is international law, and how does it work? This book argues that our answers to these fundamental questions are shaped by a variety of social cognition and knowledge production processes. These processes act as invisible frames, through which we understand international law. To better conceive the frames within which international law moves and performs, we must understand how psychological and socio-cultural factors affect decision-making in an international legal process. This includes identifying the groups of people and institutions that shape and alter the prevailing discourse in international law, and unearthing the hidden meaning of the various mythologies that populate and influence our normative world. With chapters from leading experts in the discipline, employing insights from sociology, psychology, and behavioural science, this book investigates the mechanisms that allow us to apprehend and intellectually represent the social practice of international law. It unveils the hidden or unnoticed processes by which our understanding of international law is formed, and helps readers to unlearn some of the presuppositions that inform our largely unquestioned beliefs about international law.

Libraries and Key Performance Indicators: A Framework for Practitioners explores ways by which libraries across all sectors can demonstrate their value and impact to stakeholders through quality assurance and performance measurement platforms, including library assessment, evaluation methodologies, surveys, and annual reporting. Whilst several different performance measurement tools are considered, the book's main focus is on one tool in particular: Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). KPIs are increasingly being used to measure the performance of library and information services, however, linking KPIs to quality outcomes, such as impact and value can prove very difficult. This book discusses, in detail, the concept of KPIs in the broader context of library assessment and performance measurement. Through reviewing some of the applied theory around using KPIs, along with harvesting examples of current best practices in KPI usage from a variety of different libraries, the book demystifies library KPIs, providing a toolkit for any library to be used in setting meaningful KPIs against targets, charters, service standards, and quality outcomes. - Provides an overview of performance measurement tools for libraries - Discusses KPIs in a broad context - Offers an understanding of reporting, monitoring, and acting upon KPI data - Provides best practice examples of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in libraries - Includes practical and reusable examples of KPIs that can be applied in local contexts (a toolkit approach)