Integrating Evaluative Inquiry into the Organizational Culture

A Review and Synthesis of the Knowledge Base

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to explore, through an extensive review and integration of recent scholarly literature, the conceptual interconnections and linkages among developments in the domains of evaluation utilization, evaluation capacity building, and organizational learning. Our goal is to describe and critique the current state of the knowledge base concerning the general problem of integrating evaluation into the organizational culture. We located and reviewed 36 recent empirical studies and used them to elaborate a conceptual framework that was partially based on prior work. Methodologically, our results show that research in this area is underdeveloped. Substantively, they show that organizational readiness for evaluation may be favourably influenced through direct evaluation capacity building (ECB) initiatives and indirectly through doing and using evaluation. We discuss these results in terms of an agenda for ongoing research and implications for practice.