Publisher's Synopsis
Strategy has emerged as a watchword of modern change efforts. Callsto be strategic are sounded in the private sector,government, philanthropy, and the not-for-profit sectors.Management experts stress the importance of strategic thinking.Change agents are urged to act strategically. Strategic planninghas long been a mainstay of organizational development. Leaders inall sectors talk not about theories of change or logicmodels, but about being strategic: Strategic thinking. Strategicplanning. Strategic results. Being strategic. Strategy execution.Effective strategies. Adapting strategically. And, now,evaluating strategy. But strategy is a new unit of analysisfor evaluation. Traditionally, evaluation has focused on projects,programs, products, policies, and personnel. What does it mean totreat strategy as the evaluation focus, as the thing evaluated?What is strategy? How does one evaluate strategy? What arethe implications of this new direction for evaluation theory,methods, practice, and, ultimately, use? This issue examines thesequestions and provides examples of strategy-focused evaluations.Evaluating strategy is not about evaluating strategic planning, oreven strategic plans. It's about evaluating strategy itself.Strategy is the evaluand. That poses new challenges and offers newopportunities to meet the information needs of evaluation users.For evaluation to be relevant to decision makers and leaders, thefocus of the evaluation must be on what they are concerned aboutand what they care about. Increasingly, they care about identifyingand implementing effective strategies. That's where evaluationenters the picture. Evaluating strategy has the purpose of makingstrategy more effective, differentiating effective from ineffectivestrategies, and contributing to the ongoing development andadaptation of strategy in response to changing conditions andreal-world complexities. Evaluating strategy is a new direction forevaluation, one that is likely to take on increasing importance--ifevaluators learn to do it well. This issue takes up that challenge.
This is the 128th volume of the Jossey-Bass quarterly reportseries New Directions for Evaluation, an official publication ofthe American Evaluation Association.
