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Davidson Consulting Limited |
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World-class evaluation & organisational consulting |
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Many recent workshops have focused on learning basic or advanced skills and concepts laid out in Davidson’s book, Evaluation Methodology Basics: The nuts and bolts of sound evaluation (Sage, 2004; available from DCL). See also DCL’s current List of Available Workshops.
Technical Advice and Evaluation Scoping
DCL frequently provides advice to organisations wishing to define evaluation questions and scope broad evaluation outlines before an RFP is sent out. This helps ensure that both client and evaluator are clear about the information needs before the evaluation proceeds. Recent projects of this type have been completed for various parts of the Ministry of Education. Davidson also serves on an Expert Advisory Group for the New Zealand Qualifications Authority-led reform of quality assurance in the New Zealand tertiary education sector.
Meta-evaluation (formative or summative)
DCL provides independent meta-evaluative reviews of evaluation strategies, reports, findings or proposals to help identify gaps, strengths and weaknesses. Meta-evaluation (the evaluation of evaluations) is an essential element of most professional evaluation standards. DCL can also provide ongoing formative advice and support for an individual or team working on a challenging evaluation project.
Strategic Evaluation
DCL is currently working on an independent evaluation of the State Services Commission’s Senior Leadership and Management Development (SLMD) strategy, a strategic initiative that cuts across the entire New Zealand State Services. The evaluation employs a blend of qualitative, quantitative and evaluation-specific methodology and is a follow-up to the 2005 formative evaluation of SLMD completed by Davidson Consulting Ltd.
Evaluation Capacity Building
DCL has recently completed an evaluation capacity building project with the Ministry of Education’s Group Special Education (GSE) to collaboratively design, develop and pilot an evaluation of Learning Support and Resource Centres, an itinerant teaching service for children with special needs. DCL has worked with the State Services Commission’s Human Resources Framework, providing evaluation training and technical assistance for the evaluation of multiple HR initiatives being implemented across the entire New Zealand public service. DCL has worked on a project with Western Michigan University’s internationally recognized Evaluation Center on a collaborative evaluation capacity building project for Kamehameha Schools in Hawai`i, where the primary focus is on developing and implementing culturally appropriate evaluation strategies for a wide range of programmes targetting Native Hawaiians.
Evaluating Large-Scale Organisational Change
DCL has conducted a comprehensive evaluation of a major organisational change effort consisting of 21 different change interventions, and provided useful ideas for streamlining the change.
Objective, qualitative performance appraisal
Avoid the false dichotomy between qualitatively meaningful performance appraisal and tools that are objective and transparent with regards to what performance criteria are. DCL has worked with various organizations to create a variety of qualitative performance appraisal rubrics for the objective evaluation of senior executives, accounting staff, salespeople, administrative assistants, and HR consultants.
The Organisational IQ Test
How ‘intelligent’ is your organization? Is the culture conducive to organizational learning. DCL has developed a cutting-edge tool for evaluating an organisation's learning capacity, and has successfully applied it in diverse sectors — agriculture, biotechnology, and accounting. |
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CURRENT & RECENT PROJECTS |
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DCL’s director has conducted several workshops and seminars on monitoring, evaluation and needs assessment, including several focused on evaluating culturally-based programmes.
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Evaluation workshops and seminars |
