Evaluation practices and impact: Overload?

Abstract

This chapter offers an analysis of evaluation practices in and around the universities in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The analysis builds on a conceptual framework focussing on a typology of evaluation models and combines these with an actor’s perspective. The analysis shows that similar evaluation ideas and models have been implemented across the countries, but also that when looking into evaluation practices, variations are considerable. Further, the chapter explores academics’ views on evaluation and evaluation impact. This part of the analysis reveals country differences and shows that evaluation criteria in policy- and managerial-driven evaluation schemes often do not match academic views on what constitutes and supports good performance.