The Self-Evaluating Organization

Why don’t organizations evaluate their own activities? Why don’t they seem to manifest rudimentary self-awareness? How long can people work in organizations without discovering their objectives or determining how well they have been carried out? I started out thinking it was bad for organizations not to evaluate, and I ended up wondering why they ever do it. Evaluation and organization, it turns out, are somewhat contradictory. Failing to understand that incompatibility, we are tempted to believe in absurdities, much in the manner of mindless bureaucrats who never wonder whether they are doing useful work. If instead we asked more intelligent questions, we would neither look so foolish nor be so surprised.

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Notes

• Orris C. Herfindahl, “What is Conversation? Three Studies in Minerals Economics” (Washington, D.C.: Resources for the Future, 1981), p. 2 Google Scholar
• quoting from Gifford Pinchot, Breaking New Ground (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1947), p. 326. Google Scholar
• Dan Horowitz, “Flexible Responsiveness and Military Strategy: The Case of the Israeli Army,” Policy Sciences Vol. 1, No. 2 (Summer 1970), pp. 191–205. ArticleGoogle Scholar
• The most dramatic and visible change can be found in the American presidency. Presidents have increasingly bureaucratized their operations. Within the Executive Office there are now sizable subunits, characterized by specialization and division of labor, for dealing with the media of information and communication, Congress, foreign and domestic policy, and more. At the same time, presidents seek the right to intervene at any level within the Executive Branch sporadically. Administrators are being prodded to change while the president stabilizes his environment. See Aaron Wildaysky, “Government and the People,” Commentary Vol. 56, No. 2 (August 1973), pp. 25–32. Google Scholar
• See Robert A. Levine, “Rethinking Our Social Strategies,” The Public Interest, No. 10 (Winter 1968). Google Scholar
• William A. Niskanen, Bureaucracy and Representative Government (Chicago: Aldine-Atherton, 1971). Google Scholar
• For further discussion along these lines see Jeffrey L. Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky, Implementation (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973). Google Scholar
• An exception of a kind is found in defense policy, where the purpose of the analytic exercises is to avoid testing critical hypotheses. Once the hypotheses on a nuclear war are tested, evaluators may not be around to revise their analyses. See Aaron Wildaysky, “Practical Consequences of the Theoretical Study of Defense Policy,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 25, No. 1 (March 1965), pp. 90–103. ArticleGoogle Scholar

1. Aaron Wildavsky

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Wildavsky, A. (1979). The Self-Evaluating Organization. In: The Art and Craft of Policy Analysis. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-04955-4_10

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