Field trials of a novel toolkit for evaluating ‘intangible’ values-related dimensions of projects

Burford, Gemma; Velasco, Ismael; Janoušková, Svatava; Zahradník, Martin; Hák, Tomáš; Podger, Dimity; Piggot, Georgia; Harder, Marie K.

doi:10.1016/j.evalprogplan.2012.04.005

Cited by 29 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…The action research approach used in its development, which particularly highlighted the importance of localizable proto-indicators, has been reported [34], as have several examples of its use in different organizations as an evaluation approach [5,32,33]. None of these report on the impacts of the use of the intervention, or insights of any links with business ethics and current related research gaps.…”

Section: The Wevalue Evaluative Intervention: Developing and Using Vamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The project used an emancipatory action research approach, working with organizations and businesses engaged in providing non-formal education for sustainable development (ESD). The latter considered themselves unable to articulate "intangible" aspects of their work which they nonetheless considered key, and the work focused on co-developing an approach that could be highly localized (but also generalized and transferable to some extent) [5,[32][33][34][35] which later became known as WeValue.…”

Section: Purpose Paradigm and Context Of This Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

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An Unexpected Means of Embedding Ethics in Organizations: Preliminary Findings from Values-Based Evaluations

et al. 2016

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Ethical principles constitute a crucial area of debate and discussion in the global conversation around transitions to sustainability, and of particular relevance to the contribution of businesses and other organizations. Scholars in business ethics have recently identified several challenges in this area, such as problems of measurement, rigor, and meaningfulness to practitioners; corporate social responsibility; and institutionalization of ethics in businesses. In this paper, the impacts of a pragmatic values-based evaluation approach originally developed in another field-education for sustainable development-are shown to strongly contribute to many of these challenges. Impacts found across eight organizations include (i) deep values conceptualization; (ii) increased esteem (iii) building capacity for assessment of values-based achievements; (iv) values mainstreaming; and (v) effective external values communications. It seems that the in-situ development and use of values-based indicators helped to conceptualize locally shared values that underpin decisions, thus embedding the application of (local) ethics. Although this study is exploratory, it is clear that the values-based approach shows promise for meeting key challenges in business ethics and wider sustainability, and for new directions for future cross-disciplinary research.

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Section: The Wevalue Evaluative Intervention: Developing and Using Vamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Purpose Paradigm and Context Of This Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

An Unexpected Means of Embedding Ethics in Organizations: Preliminary Findings from Values-Based Evaluations

et al. 2016

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“…The feedback was used to improve the relevance/importance, validity, comprehensibility and measurability/usability of the indicators in a variety of different civil society contexts, in accordance with current recommendations for developing sustainability indicators [84]. Through this process, the indicators were discovered to be very broadly relevant across diverse organizational and cultural contexts, and to be a sufficiently large pool to construct indicator sets for several other common human values of importance to CSOs [80,81]. Another important finding was that the usefulness of the indicators was greatly enhanced by localization, i.e., the flexibility to modify the wording to suit the specific practical context: although this also has the disadvantage of precluding direct comparisons between different organizations, it had the advantage of providing excellent face validity.…”

Section: Background: the Esdinds Projectmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A separate evaluation of the ESDinds method for purposes of project monitoring and evaluation in three different organizations is described in our earlier work [80], and there are many other possible applications for these indicators at different levels and in different contexts. The purpose of the case study in this specific paper is to demonstrate the fallacy of the immeasurability argument for enacted values.…”

Section: Background: the Esdinds Projectmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The ESDinds project, which aimed to develop values-based indicators and assessment tools for civil society organizations promoting education for sustainable development, was funded by the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) from 2009-2011 [79][80][81][82][83]. The project brought together representatives of two academic research institutions and four civil society organizations (CSOs) as equal partners, and was innovative in the extent of decision-making power granted to the CSO partners within the research consortium.…”

Section: Background: the Esdinds Projectmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Bringing the “Missing Pillar” into Sustainable Development Goals: Towards Intersubjective Values-Based Indicators

et al. 2013

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This paper argues that the need for a core -fourth pillar‖ of sustainability/sustainable development, as demanded in multiple arenas, can no longer be ignored on the grounds of intangibility. Different approaches to this vital but missing pillar (cultural-aesthetic, religious-spiritual, and political-institutional) find common ground in the area of ethical values. While values and aspects based on them are widely assumed to be intangible and immeasurable, we illustrate that it is possible to operationalize them in terms of measurable indicators when they are intersubjectively conceptualized within clearly defined practical contexts. The processes require contextual localization of items, which can nonetheless fit into a generalizable framework. This allows useful measurements to be made, and removes OPEN ACCESSSustainability 2013, 5 3036 barriers to studying, tracking, comparing, evaluating and correlating values-related dimensions of sustainability. It is advocated that those involved in operationalizing sustainability (especially in the context of creating post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals), should explore the potential for developing indicators to capture some of its less tangible aspects, especially those concerned with ethical values.

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Sustainability assessment framework and indicators developed by SuRF‐UK for land remediation option appraisal

Bardos

Thomas

Smith

et al. 2020

Remediation Journal

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The scale of land-contamination problems, and of the responses to them, makes achieving sustainability in contaminated land remediation an important objective. The Sustainable Remediation Forum in the UK (SuRF-UK) was established in 2007 to support more sustainable remediation practices in the UK. The prevailing international consensus is that risk assessment is the most rational approach for determining remediation needs and urgency. Sustainability in this context is related to the effective delivery of whatever risk management is necessary to protect human health or the wider environment. SuRF-UK suggests that decisions made at the project planning stage, and also in the choice of remediation approach used to reach particular objectives decided upon, are both opportunities for sustainability gain. In 2011, SuRF-UK issued a set of wide-ranging indicators to support sustainability assessments made during project planning and remediation option appraisal. This advice was reviewed over 2018-2020 and new guidance on process and indicators has been released. Within this guidance, SuRF-UK has provided a checklist of possible sustainability indicators/criteria that can be used to benchmark the scope of sustainability assessment for remediation projects. These indicators are divided into 15 overarching ("headline") categories, divided in a balanced way across the three elements of sustainability: environmental (emissions to air, soil and ground conditions, groundwater and surface water, ecology, and natural resources and waste); social (human health and safety, ethics and equity, neighborhoods and locality, communities and community involvement, and uncertainty and evidence); and economic (direct economic costs and benefits, indirect economic costs and benefits, employment and employment capital, induced economic costs and benefits, and project lifespan and flexibility). The majority of this study explains these categories and their various considerations in more depth and provides the supporting rationale that led to their inclusion in the revised SuRF-UK guidance.

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Field trials of a novel toolkit for evaluating ‘intangible’ values-related dimensions of projects

Cited by 29 publications

References 27 publications

An Unexpected Means of Embedding Ethics in Organizations: Preliminary Findings from Values-Based Evaluations

An Unexpected Means of Embedding Ethics in Organizations: Preliminary Findings from Values-Based Evaluations

Bringing the “Missing Pillar” into Sustainable Development Goals: Towards Intersubjective Values-Based Indicators

Sustainability assessment framework and indicators developed by SuRF‐UK for land remediation option appraisal

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