WDI Authors: Let’s End the Assessment Debate
Thursday, August 6, 2015
Impact assessment has been part of international development for more than half a century. However, debate continues on its value and varying methodologies. Heather Esper and Yaquta Kanchwala Fatehi of WDI’s Performance Measurement Initiative weigh in on the subject in a special issue of Thinkers magazine focused on the Base of the Pyramid.
Esper and Fatehi wrote that part of the problem is that the debate gets bogged down in the different terms people use – assessment, evaluation, measurement. But whatever it is called, the authors argue that it is necessary so that organizations understand how well they are doing in their mission.
Read the article here.
Thinkers is a quarterly thought leadership magazine with articles, interviews, and thought pieces from the brightest thinkers in the areas of economics and governance; philosophy and literature; science and technology; and management. It has a total readership of more than 40,000.
The latest issue of Thinkers was published in conjunction with the BoP Global Summit July 16-17 in Burlington, Vermont. Esper, Program Manager for Performance Measurement, led a working group at the summit on “Evaluating the State of Assessment: Focusing on Value Creation.” It highlighted tools and methodologies businesses can use at various stages of growth to understand their impact; and using this data to inform decision-making in order to increase the value they create.