Nicoletta Stame - Böcker

Today, evaluation is part of governing systems and is supported by powerful institutions. It is taken for granted that evaluation leads to betterment. However, evaluation itself is seldom analyzed from a critical perspective. In this book, Jan-Eric Furubo and Nicoletta Stame have assembled an international line-up of distinguished experts and emerging scholars to fill this void. Examining evaluation from a critical – or evaluative – perspective, each contribution in this book offers a systematic and critical insight into the broader relationship between evaluation and society. Divided into three parts, the various chapters ask questions such as: What are the consequences of the institutionalization of evaluation? Has the professionalization of evaluators favored their action in the public interest? Is the money spent on evaluation worth it? Is the market of evaluation allowing real competition for the best services? The answers to these questions demonstrate that the constitutive effects of the social practice of evaluation can also be the suppression of other forms of knowledge and the favoring of certain notions about societal development and political and administrative processes.

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.

In Ethics for Evaluation the diverse perspectives on ethical guidance in evaluation are untangled and ordered in a theoretical framework focusing on evaluations doing no harm, tackling bad and doing good.Divided into four parts a diverse group of subject experts present a practical look at ethics, utilizing practical experience to analyze how ethics have been applied in evaluations and how new approaches can shape the future of ethics. The chapters collectively create a common understanding of the potential role of ethics to infuse policy decisions and stakeholder initiatives with evaluations that provide better insight and potential solutions for problems, going beyond "what works" to what needs to be done and what would help. The methodological scope ranges from working in contexts of fragility, conflict and violence, to participatory and decolonized approaches, including the ethical imperatives posed by global crises such as climate change, inequity and exploitative international relations.Ethics for Evaluation presents evaluators, commissioners of evaluation, policymakers and practitioners with inspiration for an ethical perspective on how evaluation can contribute towards solving problems. It presents a solid foundation for inclusive terminology and ethics guidance that would be the heart of a global exercise in professionalization of ethical evaluation practice.

In Ethics for Evaluation the diverse perspectives on ethical guidance in evaluation are untangled and ordered in a theoretical framework focusing on evaluations doing no harm, tackling bad and doing good.Divided into four parts a diverse group of subject experts present a practical look at ethics, utilizing practical experience to analyze how ethics have been applied in evaluations and how new approaches can shape the future of ethics. The chapters collectively create a common understanding of the potential role of ethics to infuse policy decisions and stakeholder initiatives with evaluations that provide better insight and potential solutions for problems, going beyond "what works" to what needs to be done and what would help. The methodological scope ranges from working in contexts of fragility, conflict and violence, to participatory and decolonized approaches, including the ethical imperatives posed by global crises such as climate change, inequity and exploitative international relations.Ethics for Evaluation presents evaluators, commissioners of evaluation, policymakers and practitioners with inspiration for an ethical perspective on how evaluation can contribute towards solving problems. It presents a solid foundation for inclusive terminology and ethics guidance that would be the heart of a global exercise in professionalization of ethical evaluation practice.

Far more than a contractual step, commissioning shapes what is evaluated, whose voices matter, and how evidence informs democratic governance. The Power of Commissioning: Enabling Democratic Evaluation brings long overdue attention to this influential yet often overlooked dimension of evaluation practice.Positioning commissioners as civic and political actors, the book shows how their choices, from problem framing and terms of reference to team selection, management, and use, can either reinforce technocratic routines or actively promote inclusion, transparency, equity, and meaningful public learning. Drawing on comparative empirical cases, it offers one of the first integrated frameworks for democratic commissioning, complete with practical principles, rubrics, and clear “dos and don’ts” that commissioners can apply directly in real systems. The volume also advances a pioneering competency model for commissioners and documents innovative capacity‑building initiatives that treat them as knowledge brokers and democratic agents, an area largely absent from existing evaluation guidance.Featuring contributions from leading scholars and practitioners in the field, The Power of Commissioning provides both conceptual depth and actionable tools. It is an essential resource for researchers, policymakers, evaluators, and commissioning professionals committed to strengthening democratic practice through evaluation.

Today, evaluation is part of governing systems and is supported by powerful institutions. It is taken for granted that evaluation leads to betterment. However, evaluation itself is seldom analyzed from a critical perspective. In this book, Jan-Eric Furubo and Nicoletta Stame have assembled an international line-up of distinguished experts and emerging scholars to fill this void. Examining evaluation from a critical – or evaluative – perspective, each contribution in this book offers a systematic and critical insight into the broader relationship between evaluation and society. Divided into three parts, the various chapters ask questions such as: What are the consequences of the institutionalization of evaluation? Has the professionalization of evaluators favored their action in the public interest? Is the money spent on evaluation worth it? Is the market of evaluation allowing real competition for the best services? The answers to these questions demonstrate that the constitutive effects of the social practice of evaluation can also be the suppression of other forms of knowledge and the favoring of certain notions about societal development and political and administrative processes.

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.

Albert Hirschman affirmed that "Judith Tendler’s fine insights into the differential characteristics and side-effects of thermal and hydropower, and of generation and distribution, contributed in many ways to the formation of my views." Judith Tendler, in turn, wrote that Hirschman had taught her "to look where I never would have looked before for insight into a country’s development," and that in Albert’s work a researcher who was "patient enough" would find "a rich complexity of both success and failure, efficiency alongside incompetence, order cohabiting with disorder."Reconstructing the theoretical roots of interpretive social science, this text shows how Hirschman’s possibilism lies at the base of the original way Tendler practiced evaluation and anticipated many current developments. The continuing vitality of their thought enables us to trace the outlines of possibilist evaluation.

This book contains a selection of chapters coming from For a Better World (First Conference on Hirschman Legacy - Boston 2017), A Bias for Hope (Second Conference on Hirschman Legacy- Washington-WB 2018), and A Passion for the Possible (Third Conference on Hirschman Legacy - Berlin 2019). The three Conferences have been organized by A Colorni-Hirschman International Institute, Rome, Italy.Animated by a large group of well-known scholars and operatives coming from United States, Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Middle East, these Conferences provided a large spectrum of contributions on Albert Hirschman life and work, and on the wide range influence that this protagonist of the cultural scene of our time has had on managers and entrepreneurs and on public and private development around the world – from the local level, up to the UN-WB one.Sifting through the material of these Conferences, and repositioning the chosen contributions according to a general line of reasoning, however tenuous, the present collection shows the flexibility and applicability of Hirschman’s methods, concepts and proposals to the most diverse situations; and vice versa – that is it shows how those variegated realities often lend themselves to be interpreted à la Hirschman.