Results-Oriented Evaluations: Their Uses, Their Limits and How They are Driving Implementers‘ Coping Strategies

Autor/innen

  • Michel Leroy

Schlagworte:

M&E, Evaluation, Media Development, Media Support, Guidance of Change, Accountability, Management, M4D, Strategy

Abstract

While the use of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) by media development implementers is well documented, organizations’ coping strategies to adapt to new environments in media and development still remain a relatively unexplored area. The article aims at showing how the theoretical lessons learnt by the industry have been put into practice and how a successful change can be driven within an organization using outside experts. A results-oriented culture of performance and service has been enforced since the 1990s in the EU. Evaluation systems have been a powerful catalyst in driving the transition from media support to media development and in making the latter more independent from broadcasters and donors. In recent years, changes in media assistance procedures and aims have profoundly modified the traditional landscape. This article will not question these changes, their origin and motivations. It will focus on implementers’ coping strategies to adapt (or not) to these new procedures and aims and how results-oriented evaluations can drive the shift from outputs to outcomes in a changing media development sector. Can capitalizing on experience be considered a learning process that prepares for change and improves the design and implementation of projects? To what extent can it help to empower the operator as an organization? Referring to various concrete case studies from British, French and German media assistance, the article will focus on virtuous change – the circumstances that encourage structures, as well as donors who fund them, to better define and operationalize their strategies.

Autor/innen-Biografie

Michel Leroy

A senior consultant in Evaluation, Management & Media Development for European NGOs and prominent donors, Michel Leroy has led several evaluations of governance-related projects. He has 20 years of experience in the media industry as well as in media assistance, mainly in Central & North Africa, Eastern Europe and South East Asia, where he designed and implemented various media projects. In France, he ran the Lille-based Journalism School’s International Department and managed the Paris-based J-School. He then launched a huge multimedia reboot for the next generation journalists’ needs. As a journalist, he also investigated the reforms of the higher education system in France, from which he wrote a book and published an article in Science. He now lives in Paris and helps media development organizations in change management from a functional to a matrix model that facilitates coordination and participation.

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Zitationsvorschlag

Leroy, M. (2015). Results-Oriented Evaluations: Their Uses, Their Limits and How They are Driving Implementers‘ Coping Strategies. Global Media Journal - German Edition, 4(2). Abgerufen von https://globalmediajournal.de/index.php/gmj/article/view/76