Evaluation Research and the Performance Management Movement From Estrangement to Useful Integration?

The burgeoning performance management movement, with its emphasis on social program ‘results ’ measured typically by a limited set of quantitative indicators, has developed a life of its own largely apart from the evaluation research movement. Reflecting the differences in the professional history, interests and training underlying the two movements, the relationship between these disparate approaches to establishing public accountability has lacked coordination and defied integration.This article discusses the basic concepts guiding the evolution of these movements in the context of the goals of information production, and explores the major conceptual, measurement and methodological problems resulting from the lack of accommodation between them. It also provides suggestions about how these two important approaches can be better integrated, both professionally and organizationally, for the purpose of enhancing the reliability and validity of social program assessments, and therefore for improving policy development and program management. Two ‘movements ’ dedicated to improving government policies and programs and increasing government accountability have come together in the 1990s: the per-formance management movement, and the evaluation research movement.1 Although both have been given greater governmental attention across a large number of developed countries in this decade, their developmental histories differ and their relationship has been problematic. This article examines the nature of this relationship, explores why the information base for judging the value of social policies and programs can benefit from complementary information from both movements, and proposes some ways to begin increasing the integration of evalu-ation research within performance management systems. A major question is whether the current, nearly exclusive emphasis in the performance management movement on the outcomes or results of programs, frequently in the absence of a commitment to collect information about why and how those results occurred, may be leading to flawed social policy and misguided judgments of programs