ORGANIZATIONAL MEANINGS OF PROGRAM-EVALUATION

Program evaluation has to be understood as an organizational phenomenon: it is a way of understanding and evaluating action in and between organizations. But it rests on assumptions about organization which need to be challenged, and which have to be understood as a particular framing of organizational activity which will facilitate hierarchical control. Attention needs to be given to the way in which 'evaluation' are used to structure organizational activity. This raises significant questions about the relationship between the analysis of organizational activity and the activity itself.