Suchergebnisse

Vor dem Eintritt in ein neues Jahrtausend sorgt sich die westliche Welt über den Niedergang der Moral. Der vorliegende Beitrag geht folgenden Fragen nach: Ob die fortschreitende Selbstbestimmung des Individuums zu einer egoistischeren, selbstbezogeneren Gesellschaft führt? Ob dies das Ende aller wechselseitigen Verpflichtungen bedeutet? Oder ob wir uns jenseits der Freiheit an eine neue Ethik und eine neue tragfähigere Lebensform herantasten? Die Interpretation von Umfrageergebnissen zeigt folgendes Bild: In den Bereichen Familienleben, Arbeit und Politik finden sich deutliche Anzeichen sowohl für einen zunehmenden Individualismus als auch einen Zusammenbruch der alten Ordnungsstrukturen, die früheren Generationen eine feste Orientierung boten. Die Generation der heute 20- bis Anfang 30jährigen erprobt in so unterschiedlichen Bereichen wie Tierschutz und Mutterschaft, Karriere und Politik eine neue Moral. Und dort, wo die Traditionalisten die Zeit zurückdrehen möchten, treffen die "Kinder der Freiheit" eine ganz andere Wahl: anhand von ausgeübter Freiheit zu einem neuen Verständnis von Selbstbestimmung und wechselseitiger Abhängigkeit zu gelangen, das in traditionellen Ordnungen niemals zu erreichen war und ist. (pre)

Central government guidance seeks to ensure and enhance the quality of practice and decision-making across – and sometimes beyond – government. The Magenta Book, published by HM Treasury, is the key UK Government resource on policy evaluation, setting out central government guidance on how to evaluate policies, projects and programmes. The UK Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus was invited to contribute its expertise to the UK Government's 2020 update of the Magenta Book by developing an accompanying guide on policy evaluation and 'complexity'. A small multidisciplinary team worked together to produce a set of guidance, going through multiple stages of work and drawing on a variety of sources including academic and practitioner literature and experts and stakeholders in the fields of evaluation, policy and complexity. It also drew on Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus' own work developing and testing evaluation methods for dealing with complexity in evaluation. The resulting Magenta Book 2020 Supplementary Guide: Handling Complexity in Policy Evaluation explores the implications of complexity for policy and evaluation and how evaluation can help to navigate complexity. This article, designed primarily for practitioners who might be interested in this guidance and how it was developed, describes the processes involved, particularly related to the interdisciplinary dialogue and consultation with other key stakeholders that this involved. It also briefly outlines the content and key messages in the guidance, with reflections on the experiences of the authors in developing the guide – including the challenges and insights that arose during the process, particularly around the challenges of communicating complexity to a broad audience of readers.

Theory of Change diagrams are commonly used within evaluation. Due to their popularity and flexibility, Theories of Change can vary greatly, from the nuanced and nested, through to simplified and linear. We present a methodology for building genuinely holistic, complexity-appropriate, system-based Theory of Change diagrams, using Participatory Systems Mapping as a starting point. Participatory System Maps provide a general-purpose resource that can be used in many ways; however, knowing how to turn their complex view of a system into something actionable for evaluation purposes is difficult. The methodology outlined in this article gives this starting point and plots a path through from systems mapping to a Theory of Change evaluators can use. It allows evaluators to develop practical Theories of Change that take into account feedbacks, wider context and potential negative or unexpected outcomes. We use the example of the energy trilemma map presented elsewhere in this special issue to demonstrate.