How to normalize reflexive evaluation? Navigating between legitimacy and integrity

• Published in: Evaluation (London, England. 1995) England. 1995), 2021-04, Vol.27 (2), p.229-250
• Main Authors: Verwoerd, Lisa, Klaassen, Pim, Regeer, Barbara J.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Evaluation; Legitimacy; Modernism; Morality; Normalization; Performance management; Plasticity; Policy making
• ISSN: 1356-3890; 1461-7153
• DOI: 10.1177/1356389020969721

While hybrid evaluation practices are increasingly common, many Western countries continue to favor modernist evaluation logics focused on performance management—hampering the normalization of reflexive logics revolving around system change. We use Normalization Process Theory to analyze the work evaluators from a policy assessment agency undertook to accomplish the alignment between the prevailing and proposed logics guiding evaluation practice, while implementing a reflexive evaluation approach. Ad hoc alignment strategies and insufficient investment in mutual sense-making regarding reflexive evaluation hindered normalization. We conclude that alignment requires developing reflexive evaluation legitimacy in the context of application and guarding reflexive evaluation integrity, while contextual structures and cultures and reflexive evaluation components are being negotiated. Elasticity (of contextual structures and cultures) and plasticity (of reflexive evaluation components) are introduced as helpful concepts to further understand how reflexive evaluation practices can become normalized. We reflect on the use of Normalization Process Theory for studying the normalization of reflexive evaluation.