Dealing with complexity through actor-focused planning, monitoring and evaluation (PME)

Abstract

This article reports on the results of a collaborative action research project (2010-12) in which 10 development organizations (nine Dutch and one Belgian), together with their southern partners, explored different actor-focused Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (PME) approaches with the aim of dealing more effectively with complex processes of social change. A major challenge that organizations were trying to address during this action research pertained to the demonstration of observable results in complex contexts where such results are not always easy to measure or to quantify and where causal links between cause and effect cannot always be predicted. Drawing from recent literature, the article presents an analytic framework to assess the effectiveness of a PME approach in dealing with complex social change. This framework is then used to explore how actor-focused PME approaches can help international development programmes to manage complex processes of social change by stimulating processes of real-time results-based learning.

Participatory systems mapping for complex energy policy evaluation

“…The main response to this has been to construct ToCs that focus more on actors, rather than variables, and to develop maps that show webs of actors, rather than chains of events and actors (e.g. Davies, 2005; Earl et al, 2001; Ling, 2012; Van Ongevalle et al, 2014; Williams and Hummelbrunner, 2009).…”

Applying Big Data visualization to detect trends in 30 years of performance reports

“…While our methodology is applicable to theories of change in general, it is particularly useful for actor-oriented theories of change, such as outcome mapping and outcome harvesting (for a detailed account on the difference between traditional program-oriented and actor-oriented theories, see Ofek, 2017). Because our system has the ability to differentiate between the activities of various actors in Big Data, as shown in the examples and in Figures 1 to 3, it can help formulating (or, depending on the case, validate) theories of change according to different actors, and-even more importantly-point to interrelations between them, which is the essence of actor-oriented theories of change (Van Ongevalle et al, 2012). With the increasing prevalence of actor-oriented theories of change (Alkin and Carden, 2012), this is a great advantage of our method, especially in light of the intrinsic complexity of Big Data evaluations.…”

The Missing Linkage In Evaluating Networks: A Model for Matching Evaluation Approaches to System Dynamics and Complexity

“…Thus its focus is on actors rather than on the program, and this changed focus is what allows for greater flexibility (Earl et al, 2001;Van Ongevalle et al, 2012). Thus, actor-oriented TBE does not revolve entirely around what programs should do or should have done.…”

“…It can also be conducted ex-post by building the logic model according to the presumed expectations of actors or by collecting evidence of what has been achieved and working backward in order to determine whether and how the interventions contributed to change (Earl et al, 2001;UNDP, 2013). Although conventional wisdom suggests that accountability can best be demonstrated by adherence to program indicators (Rossi et al, 2004), actor-oriented approaches also respond well to accountability demands (Deprez, 2013;Patton, 2011;Van Ongevalle et al, 2012).…”