Advocacy Evaluation

Abstract

Knowledge accretion in organizations is a haphazard process and many organizations have no formal mechanisms for collecting and using information to improve decision making. Evaluators can fulfill that role, although their impact on organizational policy is often problematic. Advocacy evaluation is an activist approach to the practice of internal evaluation that can remedy this difficulty and enhance visibility of evaluation results and recommendations. To increase the impact of evaluatron in organizations, however, evaluators must view themselves as change agents and migrate from the traditional position of neutrality to an activist role in the organization. Internal evalua tors, to become organizationally influential and optimally effective, must adopt an advocacy role and actively pursue approval and implementation of evaluation recommendations. Successful internal evaluation can be accomplished by blending objective, scientific evaluation practices with a change agent perspective. The FBI evaluation office uses this approach, and this article is based on that experience.