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Organizational metrics – including rankings, ratings, and other forms of public assessment – are inextricably tied to uncertainty. Metrics are not only responses to uncertainty in the organizational environment, but they also create new forms of uncertainty within the organizations they evaluate. Given this, it is productive to consider these metrics in relation to the garbage can model of organizational decision making, a framework that was designed to provide insight into uncertain and ambiguous contexts. In this paper, the authors use the case of patient experience surveys to argue for the value of this model for understanding responses to metrics in particular conditions. Specifically, the authors demonstrate how the different features of the garbage can model manifest themselves within organizations managing numbers, and the authors then use these findings to discuss the measurement conditions that promote garbage can responses, the distinctive types of unintended consequences these responses might produce, and the implications of the garbage can model for the understanding of metrics more generally.

Rankings have become a popular topic in the social sciences over the past two decades. Adding to these debates, the present volume assembles studies that explore a variety of empirical settings, emphasizing the importance of acknowledging that there are multiple “Worlds of Rankings.” To this end, the first part of the chapter addresses the implications of two modes of criticism that characterize much of the scholarly work on rankings and summarizes extant conceptual debates. Taking stock of what we know, the second part distinguishes three areas of empirical research. The first area concerns the activities of those who produce rankings, such as the collection of data or different business strategies. Studies in the second area focus on inter-organizational, field-level, or discursive phenomena, particularly how rankings are received, interpreted, and institutionalized. The third area covers the manifold effects that research has unveiled, ranging from the diffusion of practices and changes in organizational identities to emotional distress. Taken together, the contributions to this volume expand our knowledge in all three areas, inviting new debates and suggesting pathways forward.