| Session Title: Advancing Evaluation in Organizational Settings |
| Multipaper Session 617 to be held in the Agate Room Section C on Friday, Nov 7, 1:35 PM to 3:05 PM |
| Sponsored by the Business and Industry TIG |
| Chair(s): |
| Otto Gustafson, Western Michigan University, ottonuke@yahoo.com |
| Abstract: Evaluation is a regular activity in organizations, yet few managers or business professionals refer to their work as evaluation. The application of serious evaluation in business and industry has traditionally focused on personnel-related aspects of organizations, such as training and human resource development. In this session, the presenters explore the use of evaluation in business beyond these areas to reveal applications of evaluation in business. The first paper considers the characteristics of evaluative organization, those which have integrated both evaluation thinking and practice into their culture. It will also discuss what makes organizations of this type 'something more' than learning organizations. The second paper introduces a criteria of merit checklist for evaluating organizational effectiveness. The tool is designed for use by professional evaluators and management practitioners to assess the overall effectiveness of an organization. The final paper examines how process improvements can be evaluated by organizations. |
| The Evaluative Organization: Something More than Learning |
| Amy Gullickson, Western Michigan University, amy.m.gullickson@wmich.edu |
| Evaluations performed in an organizational setting tend to focus on specific internal areas such as process improvement, quality control, or employee performance. Some organizations, however, have integrated evaluation into their culture in such a way that assessing merit, worth and/or significance is an integral part of every employee's daily work. This presentation will outline the characteristics of these 'evaluative' organizations, which are something more than learning organizations. Discussion will include the barriers and enablers to developing an evaluative culture, evaluation anxiety, and cross-disciplinary nature of this kind of culture. |
| Evaluating Organizational Effectiveness: A New Perspective |
| Wes Martz, Kadant Inc, wes.martz@gmail.com |
| The current practices of evaluating organizational effectiveness are lacking on a number of fronts - not the least being the struggle to explain the construct either theoretically or empirically. Numerous suggestions have been made to improve the assessment of organizational effectiveness. However, issues abound related to criterion instability, conflicting criteria, official goals versus operative goals, weighting criteria of merit, sub optimization, boundary specifications, narrowly defined value premises, inclusion of multiple stakeholders, ethical considerations, and the struggle to synthesize evaluative findings into an overall conclusion. This presentation will explain the failure to develop satisfactory approaches to evaluate organizational effectiveness, propose a checklist for practicing evaluators and managers to utilize when evaluating organizational effectiveness, and illustrate the practical application of the organizational effectiveness evaluation checklist. |
| Evaluating Process Improvement: An Organizational Scorecard Approach |
| Otto Gustafson, Western Michigan University, ottonuke@yahoo.com |
| Continuous improvement programs are designed to help organizations maximize their effectiveness by engaging employees at all levels to improve their daily processes through waste elimination and innovation. But how can organizations understand whether and to what extent continuous improvement is occurring? One method used to gauge business unit performance in the area of continuous improvement is to evaluate and score process improvements, quantify results and compare against set goals. This paper examines how one Fortune 500 company evaluates and drives process improvements in the context of the nuclear power industry. Inherent programmatic strengths and weaknesses will be discussed. In addition, recommendations to strengthen and expand process evaluation to other organizational contexts will be forwarded. |