Knocking on heaven’s door: The evaluation community goes to church

Abstract

Ideas and concepts about evaluation travel around the globe. Studies of how evaluation models are disseminated, diffused and implemented are important. In this article, we examine an organization with a history of traditions and legitimacy and a successful audit of its own and how it responds to modern concepts of administration where evaluation plays an important role. Based on an analytical framework from organizational theory, we show how an evaluation model has been either adopted, rejected or transformed depending on the local context and consider why central policies have had limited success in its implementation. This article should contribute to a better understanding of the transformation that evaluation undergoes in the journey between and within organizations.

Made in Sweden: The translation of a European evaluation approach

“…It is a perspective that so far has been sparsely applied to evaluation (c.f. Denvall and Linde, 2013), but which can further our theoretical understanding of how implementation of evaluation approaches vary in the increasingly multi-level, multi-actor and multicultural public administration of nation states. A clearer understanding of this process is relevant to evaluators, implementing actors and policy-makers dealing with the role and function of evaluation in multilevel governance contexts.…”