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This chapter examines World Bank publications, including publicized reports and widely disseminated policy statements like the World Development Reports, as well as the plans and appraisals of two specific operations in Indonesia. Based on this examination, the author suggests that characterizations which emphasize the Bank's intransigence or celebrate its responsiveness fail to provide a satisfactory description of country-level education policy evolution. The chapter begins with two of the major theoretical frameworks that have been used to study the Bank's work in education. This is followed by a summary of the evolution of the Bank's involvement in education at the international level. The third part of this chapter analyzes two educational reforms that the World Bank has promoted in Indonesia in the last 10 years – programs advancing vocational education and decentralization – and examines how these priorities have been affected by local context and demands and shifts in the global discourse on education. The author concludes that the World Bank's role in the diffusion of education reform is best understood from a world culture perspective but that its interests – and the interests of its primary shareholders – are advanced in particularly opportune moments like democratic transitions.

The World Bank's Education Strategy 2020 is the latest in a line of education-related strategies focused on supporting economic development in countries worldwide through systematic and targeted educational reform. Yet, the Bank has many critics and a history of developing educational policies that do as much to create inequality in education as to develop it. This chapter introduces the theme of the volume by focusing on the link between the World Bank's education strategy development and poverty reduction. The key emphasis of this volume is the development of the Bank's Education Strategy 2020 and how it is shaped by empirical evidence, contextualized by national and regional variations in education and the economy, and the legacy of World Bank educational involvement. This introductory chapter concludes by summarizing the ways in which each of the volume's chapters contribute to this theme, and suggests how the debates related to the Bank's education strategies and policies can move forward and contribute to educational improvement, economic development, and poverty reduction worldwide.

Richard Allington is professor of education at the University of Tennessee. Richard is a past president of the International Reading Association and the Literacy Research Association. He has been principal investigator on a number of research projects funded by the United States Office of Educational Research and Improvement, the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation, and the National Institutes of Health. He is the author of over 150 articles and several books.

This study aims to examine how religiosity influences brand loyalty toward religiously positioned brands (Chick-fil-A, Forever 21, etc.) when these brands engage in morally controversial actions.

Study 1 investigates how religiosity affects brand loyalty when religiously positioned brands engage in religiousness-related vs nonreligiousness-related morally controversial actions. Study 2 examines several psychological processes (reactance, forgiveness and moral decoupling) as mediators of the effects of intrinsic religiosity and extrinsic religiosity on brand loyalty for controversial religious brands.

Study 1 demonstrates that religiosity leads to positive brand loyalty for religiously positioned brands in the case of both religiousness-related and nonreligiousness-related controversies. Study 2 reveals that intrinsic religiosity (extrinsic religiosity) leads to brand loyalty through moral decoupling and forgiveness, but not through reactance, when religious brands engage in religiousness-related (nonreligiousness-related) controversies.

This research focuses on the effects of religiosity on brand loyalty for morally controversial religious brands but does not examine the effects of religious affiliation (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc.). The samples include only US residents.

Religious positioning of brands can engender brand loyalty for consumers with high levels of intrinsic religiosity and/or extrinsic religiosity, even when these brands engage in morally controversial actions.

This research shows that religiosity affects brand loyalty for morally controversial religious brands and demonstrates that psychological processes used by consumers to justify support for morally controversial religious brands depend on type of religiosity (intrinsic vs extrinsic) and type of controversy (religiousness-related and nonreligiousness-related).