Problems of conventional evaluation models can be understood as an impoverished 'conversation' between realities (of non-linearity, indeterminate attributes, and everchanging context), and models of evaluating such realities. Meanwhile, ideas of systems thinking and complexity science -grouped here under the acronym STCSstruggle to gain currency in the big 'E' world of institutionalised evaluation. Four evaluation practitioners familiar with evaluation tools associated with STCS offer perspectives on issues regarding mainstream uptake of STCS in the big 'E' world. The perspectives collectively suggest three features of practicing systemic evaluation: (i) developing value in conversing between bounded values (evaluations) and unbounded reality (evaluand), with humility; (ii) developing response-ability with evaluand stakeholders based on reflexivity, with empathy; and (iii) developing adaptive rather than mere contingent use(fulness) of STCS 'tools' as part of evaluation praxis, with inevitable fallibility and an orientation towards bricolage (adaptive use). The features hint towards systemic evaluation as core to a reconfigured notion of developmental evaluation.
This article offers empirical evidence of the utilization of evaluation findings of the World Bank Institute's (WBI) efforts to help reduce corruption in Tanzania and Uganda. These initiatives are part of the World Bank-WBI program to curb corruption in developing countries. This analysis focuses on the mid-term evaluation of the WBI's anti-corruption activities in those countries. The study shows, through a series of examples, how evaluation has been used in both an instrumental and an enlightenment fashion by program designers and implementers. Although links between knowledge generation and utilization are seldom clear and direct, and specific information cannot always be isolated as the basis for a particular decision, the examples show that utilization has occurred, bringing about change in program design and implementation.
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