Integrated evaluation of change: a new perspective for planning and evaluation in multiple intervention environments

Abstract

Most evaluations are done from a policy/ programme/ project perspective. The downstream perspective which accompanies the flow of resources through the dissipative structures of the agencies to produce change in societies requires an organised upstream flow of information in order to keep the resources flowing downstream, where they feed the agencies and produce the intended impact. This perspective has dominated and limited method-driven evaluation as well as the different approaches of theory-based evaluation. An integrated evaluation of change approach tries to understand what is happening at the receiving end of development and social intervention through a perspective that looks first at the society and the wide range of organisations in the organisational landscape. Evaluation can thus cross the boundary of the learning organisation and contributes to a learning organisational landscape – networks, clusters or just assorted organisations targeting the same reality, and thereby contribute to the improvement of interventions in a way that transcends the organisational and programme/ project perspective.