Enhancing Evaluation Use: Insights from Internal Evaluation Units
offers invaluable insights from real evaluators who share
strategies they have adopted through their own experiences in
evaluation. Readers will learn about the challenges, solutions, and
lessons drawn from the experience of evaluators working in a wide
range of organizations. Referencing the latest literature,
contributors discuss factors that help or undermine attempts to
foster an evaluative thinking and learning culture within an
organization. Applicable in a wide range of situations, their
accounts demonstrate the initiative and innovative thinking they
use to address challenges in various, sometimes complex, evaluation
settings. Questions at the end of each chapter stimulate thought
and discussions about the issues raised and allow readers to apply
their findings to their own situations. "This book speaks to a
cutting-edge topic, that is, the potential to generalize program
evaluation expertise to larger organizational questions, and the
cases from multiple international contexts represent a unique
feature." -John Clayton Thomas, Georgia State University "The use
of actual cases to highlight major concepts in evaluation in the
public sector is a great feature." -Danica G. Hays, Old Dominion
University "The text provides practical information from a variety
of organizational contexts and the integration of international
experiences provides for expanded discussion of evaluation theory
and practice." -Kathleen Norris, Plymouth State University "The key
strengths of this book lie in its national, supra-national and
international organizational contexts, its consistency in insider
perspectives, and the detailed examples provided." -Donna Haig
Friedman, University of Massachusetts, Boston "The book of essays
reviewed here was edited by two eminent evaluators. It fills an
important gap in the literature: in pursuit of improved quality of
evaluation products, evaluation thinkers have lavished attention on
evaluation methods, ethics and use but they have sorely neglected
evaluation governance issues and have largely failed to probe the
workings of evaluation within organizations. Yet, most evaluations
are commissioned by (or undertaken within) organizations. The
choices organizations make in structuring evaluation functions and
designing evaluation processes have a major bearing on the
relevance, validity and usefulness of evaluations. Refreshingly,
the book offers fresh mental models and practical lessons about
evaluation systems and practices adopted in diverse organizational
settings. All contributors to the book are seasoned practitioners.
They hail from national, supranational and international
organizations and many of them have trespassed across these
thematic and organizational boundaries. They all are equipped to
draw on a vast reservoir of hands---on experience as evaluation
commissioners, managers, internal evaluators or external
practitioners. Remarkably, they also display considerable
familiarity with relevant themes treated by the organization
management and evaluation literature. Given its pragmatic focus the
book is bound to elicit broad based interest among evaluation
practitioners. While it addresses familiar dilemmas and challenges
(evaluation independence, evaluation utilization, organizational
learning, nurturing of an evaluation culture, etc.) it does so from
the distinctive perspective of "insiders" who have had to contend
with a variety of organizational constraints and management
pressures. Revealingly most contributors find good reasons to be
optimistic about the possibility of positive change. The stage is
set by John Mayne whose introductory and authoritative chapter
identifies the critical importance of organizational factors in the
utilization of evaluation results. This is followed by Bastiaan de
Laat's chapter which puts forward an ingenious analytical
construct: the "tricky triangle" of relationships that links
commissioners, evaluators and evaluands. Specifically De Laat
unmasks and assesses the different and complex configurations that
result from this triangular interplay. Penny Hawkins' elegant
contribution underlines the importance of evaluation independence.
It highlights the considerable impact that the electoral cycle may
have on evaluation approaches. It also reveals that indigenous
cultures may present formidable obstacles to the very notion of
external evaluative oversight. The next chapter penned by Marlene
Laubli's is equally perceptive in tracing the creative adaptation
that the evaluation function underwent in response to changes in
the organizational force field of the Swiss Federal Office of
Public Health's Evaluation Unit. In a similar vein Erica Wimbush
provides a lucid exposition of the strategies used to bridge
evaluative knowledge and management action in Scotland's public
health agency. Still within the health field, Nancy Porteous and
Steve Montague show convincingly that transformative organizational
change in Canada's Public Health Agency was facilitated through
judicious evaluation programming and what has come to be called
"double loop learning". Finally, Bastiaan de Laat and Kevin
Williams summarize important findings from of two empirical studies
of evaluation use in the European Commission that go a long way in
identifying good practices for evaluation commissioning in a
supra--- national organizational context. The next two chapters of
the book focus on two specialized agencies of the United Nations.
They tread gently in what is admittedly a highly sensitive and
contested terrain. Maria J. Santamaria Hergueta, Alan Schnur and
Deepak Thapa discuss how the World Health Organization's evaluation
function evolved towards greater independence over several decades
while Janet Neubecker, Matthew Ripley and Craig Russon focus on the
innovative techniques used within the International Labour
Organization to enhance utilization of self evaluation findings.
The final chapter by Marlene Laubli Loud misses the opportunity to
compensate for the "good news" bias that understandably
characterizes the previous contributions. Surprisingly, it displays
ambivalence towards evaluation independence which it equates with
externality, a concept soundly rejected by de Laat. But setting
this dimension aside, the chapter is interesting and valuable since
it reflects the co---editor' vast experience as an evaluator,
evaluation trainer and evaluation manager in diverse national and
international contexts. Thus the chapter provides a useful
compilation of "take away" messages focused on good evaluation
management practices. It is on solid grounds when it describes how
to make effective use of advisory committees, motivate potential
evaluation users, design good terms of reference, select the right
evaluators, craft judicious evaluation policies and keep an eye out
for political "windows of opportunity". Each chapter of the book
concludes with a crisp exposition of overarching findings,
discussion topics and references. Thus the volume should be of
practical value to teachers, students, professional evaluators as
well as evaluation commissioners and programme managers. All in
all, this is a book that belongs on your shelf if you are intent on
enhancing the role that evaluation plays in your organization."
-Robert Picciotto, UKES Council Member
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