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This article demonstrates the value of Foucault's conception of discipline for understanding organizational responses to rankings. Using a case study of law schools, we explain why rankings have permeated law schools so extensively and why these organizations have been unable to buffer these institutional pressures. Foucault's depiction of two important processes, surveillance and normalization, show how rankings change perceptions of legal education through both coercive and seductive means. This approach advances organizational theory by highlighting conditions that affect the prevalence and effectiveness of buffering. Decoupling is not determined solely by the external enforcement of institutional pressures or the capacity of organizational actors to buffer or hide some activities. Members' tendency to internalize these pressures, to become self-disciplining, is also salient. Internalization is fostered by the anxiety that rankings produce, by their allure for the administrators who try to manipulate them, and by the resistance they provoke. Rankings are just one example of the public measures of performance that are becoming increasingly influential in many institutional environments, and understanding how organizations respond to these measures is a crucial task for scholars. (Contains 8 footnotes and 1 table.)

This article suggests how the harmful effects of law school rankings in the U.S. might be mitigated. It shows how "U.S. News & World Report" holds a virtual monopoly over the rankings. It compares the effects of law school rankings to those of business schools. The authors argue that a degree of ambiguity about the relative standing of law schools is created by multiple rankers.

The decision not to build Orme Dam was a great political victory for residents of the Fort McDowell Indian Reservation in central Arizona. This article examines the conditions that gave rise to what most considered an unlikely outcome, and the lessons it suggests for understanding the politics of large water projects. These lessons include the importance of understanding that rationality takes multiple forms; that how value is expressed can be as significant as what, and how much, something is valued; that identity politics which elaborates and celebrates cultural differences can be an effective means for challenging even powerful bureaucracies; and that law can be an important mediating structure in the politics of bureaucratic decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a systematic study of monetary meaning by designing a framework. Demonstration of the usefulness of the framework; What monetary meanings are dependent on; Dimensions of monetary meaning; How people treat money differently; Aspects of monetarization; Conclusion to the study.