Bureaucratic Competence as an Essential Factor in Cross-Cultural/Multicultural Program Evaluations

Abstract

While we may all agree in principle that both implementers and evaluators should be culturally sensitive and ethical as well as instrumentally effective in their work practices, we often ignore the extent to which these practice goals may conflict with one another in achieving bureaucratic competence, particularly in a multicultural society. Reconciling them requires us to acknowledge the indispensable role of responsible program evaluation in this effort, one that addresses: both the employees and the recipients of programs; the need for evaluators to be open to both theoretical and operational contributions to the field; the signal role of bureaucratic, as well as electoral, modes of representation; the indispensable function of affirmative action and pay equity programs in reconciling diversity and fairness; and the principle that subjects in evaluation and implementation processes should play a more significant role than the passive status assigned them by traditional bureaucracy and applied social science.