A meta-evaluation of the success case method applied to a leadership development program

The study explores meta-evaluation as an approach that corporate learning functions can employ to assess the efficacy of a given evaluation method. To that end, an internal meta-evaluation was conducted to determine the utility, feasibility, propriety and accuracy of an already completed Success Case evaluation of a leadership development program within a global bank. Twenty-one subjects from the company’s Human Resources department, including the researcher, participated in the meta-evaluation. The researcher personally recruited the subjects based on their involvement with the leadership development program’s design and deployment. Data were collected via online questionnaire, semi-structured interviews, and a review of archival data. The meta-evaluation findings suggest that the Success Case evaluation met the overall standard of propriety to a “very great extent,” and the standards of accuracy, feasibility and utility to a “great extent.” Specifically, while the participants in the study agreed with the Success Case evaluation’s primary conclusion that there were opportunities for the program to have greater business impact, they also identified limitations in the evaluation’s recommendations to improve the program and increase manager engagement. In addition to the efficacy of the Success Case Method using meta-evaluation criteria, the study discusses the opportunities and limitations of meta-evaluation as a potential approach to enable organizations to develop more robust, effective and comprehensive evaluation strategies.Psy.D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Kevin Robert Enghol