Communication, commitment and collaboration

Evaluation provides usable information to support decisions about program or policy operations and effectiveness. Therefore, it plays an important role in the choice of the public policy instruments with which governmental authorities wield their power when attempting to ensure support and to effect social change. The situations of evaluation are complex and various, often involving conflicts between ethical principles as well as among the aims or claims of stakeholders. In this study, the complex nature of evaluation practice is the starting point of sketching guidelines for collaborative ethical reflection. To this end, the study considers different approaches which have their strong and weak points, and shows how activity theory can be applied to analyze the contradictory position of evaluators in situations where cooperational relationships and professional networks are close.