Short Abstract

The aim of this panel is to set out and discuss the case for a new relational approach by reframing evaluation using complexity theory for public services. Practical and theoretical insights on relational evaluation is and propose forms of evaluative practice which sustain improvement.

Description

The last few years have seen social innovations that centre on relationships as both the sought outcome for social cohesion, and the means of tackling societies big challenges, and this is giving governments and communities direction about how to conduct change work. Public services and philanthropy funded initiatives designed to achieve valued social outcomes from educational attainment to public health to environmental sustainability, now require a comprehensive shift in delivery, management, policy, and scholarship to sustain the public outcomes that innovations in those services are creating (Bartels and Turnbull 2020, Wilson et al 2024, Bartels et al 2024; Baines et al 2024). Creating outcomes that matter to the public is becoming an increasingly complex task in an ever more trying climate. But we lack evidence of ‘what works’ in order to inform choices and sustain investment with many evaluations set up to ‘fail’ in their role of generating the ‘required’ knowledge where the contextual complexity makes this challenging at best (Mowles 2014, Lowe and Wilson 2017, French et al 2023).

Part of the underlying inertia resulting from the ongoing application of the orthodox rationalistic stance to reform risks an opportunity to be reformative across all the levers of social change. The gift of desperation felt by some social reformers has started to signal what can be changed in spite of necessary and responsive innovations in policy, commissioning, inspection, accountability, leadership, measurement and evaluation. Specifically, where relational approaches are the signature of social improvement, relational approaches to its management, including their evaluation, is an opportunity for evaluation to act as a lever in the relational turn in public service. The aim of this panel is to set out and discuss the case for a new relational approach to evaluation which responds to the significant problems generated by the rationalistic approach to outcomes-based evaluation in the evaluation industry, by reframing evaluation using complexity theory for the purposes of relational public services. We offer both practical and theoretical insight on what a relational evaluation approach is and propose relational forms of evaluative practice which have been serving to sustain improvement.

A Relational evaluation does require alternative forms of quality, and this session will offer criteria which have been observed among those adopting relational practices to uphold a new accountability of their practice. This brings specificity to new forms of outcomes, data and information, analysis, scaling, and rigour, all through an examination of theory from across the arts, humanities, and policy spheres. In doing so, the objective will be to: a) surface the conditioning that current orthodoxies have had on evidence, and its limitations, thus dismantling its value in social innovation; b) critique current forms of complex evaluation by revisiting the inherent emancipatory ontologies from which they are originated; c) reintroduce relational evaluation to the public management agenda on different terms, to create compatibility with other relational turns across public service and public policy, and; d) offer a capability framing which tools and equips relational public servants, civil servants, and evaluators for sustainable improvement.