1st Edition

From Studies to Streams Managing Evaluative Systems

Edited By Nicoletta Stame Copyright 2006
    316 Pages
    by Routledge

    316 Pages
    by Routledge

    Recent developments in policy evaluation have focused on new notions of process and use or, notably, "influence." But this debate among evaluators on how evaluations are used has been essentially a closed one—evaluators talking only among themselves. The debate has gone on seemingly oblivious to fundamental changes in the intellectual landscape of public management, organizational theory, information technology, and knowledge management. New realities demand a different approach toward evaluation.

    The current era is characterized by the emergence of an increasingly global set of pressures for governments to perform effectively, not just efficiently, and to demonstrate that their performance is producing desired results. Information technology allows enormous quantities of information to be stored, sorted, analyzed, and made available at little or no cost. The result for those in the evaluation community is that, while individual evaluations are still conducted and reported upon, they are a rapidly diminishing source of information.

    In the new environment, ever accelerating political and organizational demands and expectations are reframing thinking about the definition of what, fundamentally, constitutes evaluation and what we understand as its applications. In this twelfth volume in the Comparative Policy Evaluation series, authors from fourteen nations address these issues from multiple vantage points. From Studies to Streams is an essential tool for policymakers, government officials, and scholars interested in the contemporary status of evaluation.

    1: Channelled Streams of Evaluative Knowledge; 1: The “E” in Monitoring and Evaluation— Using Evaluative Knowledge to Support a Results-Based Management System; 2: How Evaluation Can Help Make Knowledge Management Real; 2: Information Systems at Work for Evaluation; 3: Management of Evaluative Knowledge in National Health: Some Comparative Observations; 4: Organizing Knowledge; 5: Managing Evaluations in the Netherlands and Types of Knowledge; 6: Implementing Results-Based Management; 3: Thematic Evaluations and Their Uses; 7: Complex Policies and Evaluative Streams of Knowledge; 8: Evaluating Knowledge about the Instruments of Government: The Canadian Federal Experience; 9: Why Evaluations Sometimes Can’t be Used— and Why They Shouldn’t; 4: Strategic Budgeting and Streams of Knowledge; 10: Evaluation Use and Information Communication Technology; 11: Evaluative Information in the Norwegian Ministries; 12: Evaluation Knowledge for Strategic Budgeting; 5: Multi-Study Evaluation and the Learning Organization; 13: Evaluation, Knowledge Management, and Learning: Caught between Order and Disorder; 14: Patterns of Evaluative Knowledge Creation and Utilization within the World Bank; Postscript; Conclusion

    Biography

    Nicoletta Stame