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Drawing on the rich social science literature on organizational effectiveness, this chapter puts forth the theoretical and methodological foundations of the WTO Dispute Settlement System (DSS) goal-based effectiveness framework. After discussing the main approaches developed in the social sciences to defining organizational effectiveness, the chapter explains the reasons for selecting the goal-based approach to serve as the basis for the study into the effectiveness of the WTO DSS. The chapter then reviews the central concepts associated with this approach and their application to the world of WTO adjudication, while focusing on organizational goals, goal multiplicity, goal conflict, and goal shifting. Finally, the chapter discusses several methodological determinations that should be made before applying the proposed WTO DSS goal-based effectiveness framework. These include the selection of the goal setters to inform the DSS’s effectiveness analysis, the choice of performance indicators, and the determination of the time frame in which effectiveness is to be measured.

This chapter addresses significant changes in career patterns that performers frequently encounter, such as plateaus, burnout, goal shifts, and self-image changes. It offers advice for testing the significance of impulses to change directions, as well as exercises.

The present chapter concludes the work. It sums up the key findings of the study while discussing the results emerging from a comparative analysis of the three categories of disputes examined throughout the book. The chapter then revisits the central arguments put forth in the book and articulates the lessons to be learned for the study of the goals, operation, and effectiveness of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Dispute Settlement System (DSS), and of international courts more broadly. It also discusses some of the insights to be offered with respect to possible institutional changes or reforms of the WTO DSS, with a view to ensuring the system’s future effectiveness. The chapter closes with several observations that go beyond effectiveness, pertaining to the costs and unintended consequences attendant on more effective and empowered international adjudication.

The introductory chapter begins with a review of the literature on the effectiveness of international courts, with a focus on the World Trade Organization (WTO) Dispute Settlement System (DSS). It then sets out the book’s main objective, which is to offer a multidimensional approach for analysing the effectiveness of the WTO DSS, a goal-based approach that defines DSS effectiveness as the extent to which this adjudicative system attains the goals set for it by the WTO and its Member states. Such an approach not only transcends classic compliance-centred effectiveness models by taking into account the manifold goals entrusted to the DSS, but also enables revelation of the real-life intricacies underlying the DSS’s operation and, consequently, its effectiveness, as these emerge from the multiple, conflicting, and shifting nature of its objectives. After formulating the book’s research agenda and objectives, the chapter provides an overview of the book’s four parts and explains its methodological framework.