Summary: Evaluation And Public Management

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• 26 Evaluation and public management

• What do I expect to learn about evaluation and public management?

  I expect to learn about evaluation: the different approaches to evaluation, each with its legitimacy, practical focus and main critical points.

• 26.1 Intro

• What is evaluation according to Dahler-Larsen (2005)?

  Evaluation -according to Dahler-Larsen- is a set of approaches, models and methods, which help organize this sort of questioning. 
  It is 'assisted sensemaking' (Mark, Henry & Julnes 2000) which, by way of 'artificially' cnstructed methods and procedures, helps constrct data which indicate whether particular activities are good (enough), whatever that means in particular contexts.  
  
  Whether it should mean that the particular activities lead to certain expected outcomes, specified and measured in particular ways, is of course in itself often a point of contention.

• What role does evaluation have according to New Public Management?

  NPM advocates a strong focus on 'outcomes' of public policies and defines an important role for evaluation with respect to monitoring ''outcomes'' as an integrated part of this managerial regime.

• Is evaluation only for monitoring outcomes?

  No, evaluation cannot be reduced to this one role or function, but encompasses a rich and dynamic set of approaches. There are different expectations and also different expectations possible for evaluation.

• Which approaches or there to evaluation?

  With the risk of unduly reducing the complexity of the field, Dahler-Larsen argues that the most significant and competing schools of thought in evaluation can be recognized, namely:
  
  
  - goal-oriented  evaluation;
  - theory based evaluation;
  - responsive/ participatory evaluation.

• 26.2 'Evaluation wave'

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• How does Power (1997) define evaluation?

  According to Power, evaluation is part and parcel (een pakket) of a larger cultural wave consisting also of audits, inspection, and quality assurance, which together constitute 'a huge and unavoidable social experiment which is conspicuously cross-sectional and transnational'.

• Is evaluation in every policy area?

  At closer inspection, evaluation is not characterized by undifferentiated intensity and growth. While programs and institutions in education, social services, and foreign aid are frequent objects of evaluation, a study found that some policy areas and institutions are still quite resistant to evaluation namely: defense, law, churches and infrastructure.

• With what is evaluation integrated to an increasing extent?

  To an increasing extent, evaluation is integrated with performance measurement systems and other forms of NPM-oriented monitoring (Furubo, Rist & Sandahl 2001).

• How do we know evaluation now according to Weiss (1998)

  As a large-scaled government-funded activity. It prepared the ground for important experiences, ideas, textbooks ans subsequent evaluation debates which helped constitute evaluation as a distinctive field.

• Is evaluation a new phenomenon?

  No. Evaluation has a long history of the application of social science to the description and remediation of social problems, which are accounted for as an earlier 'generation' of evaluation by observers as Guba and Lincoln (1989).