If you think bureaucracies are incapable of learning and change, read this book. The books editors and chapter authors commendably address how evaluation can influence the role and effectiveness of bureaucratic institutions by using evaluation to support adaptive and emergent strategy, innovation, and organizational learning, in addition to highlighting ways to enhance evaluation use and evaluative thinking. It is good to see a book that draws so well on current conversations and ideas about the future of bureaucracies.
Hallie Preskill,Managing Director, FSG
Changing bureaucracies? Oxymoronic. Adapting to uncertainty? Sisyphean. How evaluation can help. Audacious. The future: Waves of interconnected global emergencies pandemics, social injustice, growing economic inequities, climate crisis, unsustainable use of the Earths resources. The way forward: If there be one, must includechanged bureaucracies that use evaluation to adapt to uncertainty. Can it happen? This book provides hope, not certainty, not simplicity, but cumulative evidence and argument amounting to hope. No small thing in these troubled times. This book will engage you in considering the possibilities for such an oxymoronic, Sisyphean, audacious, visionary, and essential future.
Michael Quinn Patton, author of Blue Marble Evaluation
Almost by definition, evaluation interacts with bureaucracy. In these times of increasing complexity and rapid change, this book credibly explores those interactions and challenges, and discusses ways forward for a more productive relationship. The authors bring impressive and varied experience to bear on the issues, with the result: lots of great reading!
John Mayne, Advisor on Public Sector Performance
Changing Bureaucracies
In Changing Bureaucracies, international experts provide an unparalleled look at how public sector bureaucracies can better adapt to the reality of unprecedented levels of uncertainty and complexity, and how they can better respond to the emerging needs and demands of citizens and beneficiaries. In particular, they discuss in detail how evaluation can play an important role in aiding bureaucracies in adapting, while noting that the value of evaluation is not at all automatic.
Written in a clear and accessible prose, the contributors identify stability as a strength of bureaucratic structures, although adaptability is required in order to remain relevant. They also emphasize the need for bureaucratic rules and practices to be open to examination, such as through evaluation, noting that these rules may take on a life of their own, increasing distrust and conflicting with a meaningful focus on how outcomes and impacts benefit citizens. The book concludes with guidance for both evaluators and for public sector leaders about steps that they can take to improve the responsiveness and relevance of public sector organizations.
Pioneering the provision of reflections on how evaluation can play an important role in aiding bureaucracies in adapting, Changing Bureaucracies is an important acquisition for public sector leaders, evaluators, evaluation managers, and commissioners and academics alike.
Burt Perrin is an author and thinker, independent consultant and recognized leader in the evaluation field internationally, with publications including evaluation and bureaucracy, meaningful approaches to accountability, how to make evaluation useful, and evaluation of innovation. He has over 40 years practical experience assisting governments and other organizations internationally, more recently providing expert advice and quality assurance regarding planning, evaluation management and activities, and related services.
Tony Tyrrell is an independent consultant with more than 25 years experience in evaluation and related fields. Tonys early experience in evaluation was with the European Social Fund Evaluation Unit where he produced influential evaluations on various subjects including early school leaving and local development. Tony later worked with a number of private consulting firms on strategic, policy, and program evaluation and on performance management. More recently he spent six years with the Independent Evaluation Group at the World Bank Group (WBG) where he worked on various strategic, thematic, and country evaluations. Tony now works as an independent consultant with various clients including the WBG, the Asian Development Bank, 3ie and others. Tony holds an MSc in Management (Organization Behavior), and an MA in English Literature.
Comparative Policy Evaluation
Edited by Ray C. Rist
The Comparative Policy Evaluation series is an interdisciplinary and internationally focused set of books that embodies within it a strong emphasis on comparative analyses of governance issues drawing from all continents and many different nation states. The lens through which these policy initiatives are viewed and reviewed is that of evaluation. These evaluation assessments are done mainly from the perspectives of sociology, anthropology, economics, policy science, auditing, law, and human rights. The books also provide a strong longitudinal perspective on the evolution of the policy issues being analyzed.
Changing Bureaucracies
Adapting to Uncertainty, and How Evaluation Can Help
Edited by Burt Perrin and Tony Tyrrell With a foreword by Kathryn E. Newcomer
First published 2021
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2021 selection and editorial matter, Burt Perrin & Tony Tyrrell; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Burt Perrin & Tony Tyrrell to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-60804-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-10058-4 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Newgen Publishing UK
Contents
TONY TYRRELL
KAROL OLEJNICZAK AND JAKUB ROK
JACQUES TOULEMONDE AND SAMER HACHEM
ANDREW KOLEROS
MARGARET DALZIEL
VERONICA GAFFEY
KEVIN WILLIAMS
RICHARD BOYLE AND TONY TYRRELL
ESTELLE RAIMONDO AND FRANS L. LEEUW
KIM FORSS AND ALISON POLLARD
FRANCESCO MAZZEO RINALDI
BURT PERRIN
Richard Boyle is Head of Research, Publishing and Corporate Relations at the Institute of Public Administration in Ireland. His major areas of specialization, in which he has published extensively, include performance measurement, monitoring and evaluation systems, the management of whole of government issues, and public service change and reform programs.
