Principles and Practices of Organizationally Integrated Evaluation

Abstract

Evaluation is often conceptualized in terms of static research designs focused on specific questions of programmatic process or outcome. Another way to conceptualize evaluation is to broaden its scope, role, and methods and to integrate its principles and processes into every aspect of a program’s organizational environment. The principles and practices of learning organizations, total quality management, continuous program improvement, and empowerment evaluation provide useful tools for conceptualizing the multiplicity of roles for evaluation within complex public-sector organizational environments. The authors have developed 20 guiding principles for engaging in organizationally integrated evaluation: the concepts of multiple constituent needs, cultural appropriateness, effective leadership of the process, total organizational commitment, continuous improvement, constancy of purpose, organizational teamwork, empowerment within the organization, training and development, cross-organizational collaboration, organizational integration, development and change, multiplicity of methods, statistical process control, goals of efficiency and effectiveness, goals of knowledge building, utility of outcomes, feasibility, propriety and ethical status of the process, and accuracy of outcomes. The authors discuss these principles as applicable to existing evaluation processes and provide a case example of their use in local evaluation of a Native American community.