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This article explores the applicability of participatory action research (PAR) on two levels: on the one hand, as a participatory evaluation method for community engagement and community development; on the other hand, as a tool to link ex ante and ex-post evaluation that situated at various stages of the policy cycle.

Through a practice-based case study of the community engagement process of Valletta Design Cluster, this paper aims to illustrate how PAR can offer collaborative and continuous evaluation by facilitating social action through a practical, situative, context-bounded, responsive and transformative framework.

The study explores how PAR can contribute to cultural sustainability by linking community development with participatory evaluation, and it offers new perspectives on the applicability of PAR as a tool to link ex ante and ex-post evaluation, situated at various stages of the policy cycle.

Although based on a single case, the paper demonstrates that the method has the potential to be applied in various contexts, as it helps to foster local ownership and to develop future cultural strategies, thus providing a base for cultural sustainability.

The novelty of this study is to link evaluation – a majorly top-down and ex ante approach – with participatory planning. PAR-E offers a continuous participatory framework for the whole European Capitals of Culture (ECoC) cycle, as well as serving as a tool for empowerment and community development.

The aim of this article is to introduce business wargaming as a tool for ex ante strategy evaluation. Reviewing criticism of other approaches, such as scenarios and computer‐based simulations, this article explores whether business wargaming is a suitable response to this criticism.

This article reviews and discusses the literature on strategy testing and business wargaming.

Business wargaming is capable of responding to criticism of scenarios and computer‐based simulations when applied to the ex ante evaluation of strategy. Business wargaming, which arose from military wargaming, is a strategic simulation that is dynamic and participative, allowing managers to experience how their strategy will compete and endure in their business environment.

Additional research is needed to explore the application of business wargaming in practice as a tool for the testing of strategy.

The article suggests that business wargaming is a valuable tool for testing strategies in a simulation, which is participative and dynamic.

This article fills the research gap on strategy testing and points to a tool – business wargaming – that has been applied intensively in the military field.

The purpose of this paper is to explore, in literature and practice, the use of ex post impact evaluations within the public–private partnership (PPP) context and understand the major considerations for developing a PPP ex post impact evaluation method.

This paper applies exploratory research through expert interviews from Chile and Australia to describe: the relevance of this kind of evaluation, and the challenges of designing and conducting a PPP ex post evaluation.

The study confirms the lack of a formal method for evaluating the impact of a PPP project. Experts agree on the relevance of performing ex post evaluations to PPP projects and that in practice there is no formal procedure to follow. Among other challenges, experts discussed four general ex post evaluation aims: transparency and accountability, PPP legitimization, industry learning and government agency learning.

This study confirms the gap in knowledge and contributes to the developments of approaches to perform ex post impact evaluation of PPP projects. It also provides several suggestions that need to be addressed when attempting to evaluate PPPs beyond the financial and contractual parameters.

The topic is not fully addressed in the literature, and this study contributes to the initial discussion and development of this evaluation method, which is considered significant for the development of public infrastructure.

The purpose of this study is to characterize output and impact evaluation initiatives from the perspective of entrepreneurs and investors of social enterprises (SE) by highlighting their relevance, implementation processes and consequences.

This study adopted a qualitative approach through a multiple case study. This study also analyzed ten SE in five areas and three investors, using semi-structured interviews, codification and content analysis.

Evaluation is still at an initial stage in these businesses, and there is a gap between what the field-specific literature proposes and what firms do. Although entrepreneurs feel that evaluation is essential to demonstrate their value and confirm their purpose and impact, it is not a priority.

Due to the small number of Brazilian enterprises and investors, it is impossible to generalize the results.

The results are relevant to rethink strategies, processes and methodological tools that seek to portray, more realistically and reliably, the evaluation dimensions in SE.

This study highlights the risk regarding the legitimacy of social impact ventures since, without the due causal inferences, it is not easy to prove the impact they claim to achieve. This situation conducts to the weakening of the ecosystem leading to the emptying of the term impact.

The main research contributions address the methodologies, practices and evaluation routines of some Brazilian SE and their investors, presenting the characteristics, perceptions and limitations of the studied ventures.

Despite the availability of methods and techniques designed to assist with predictive and retrospective evaluation of ICT initiatives, management continues to struggle to perform meaningful evaluations, and the measurement of ICT investment payoff remains a challenge. A recurring problem associated with failed ICT‐based investment is poor change management. This paper aims to focus on the value of understanding the change management aspects of ICT investments.

A framework was developed from a study of the change management literature. An empirical investigation involving a qualitative case study approach was then conducted in order to assess the efficacy of the framework during the evaluation process.

Business benefit from ICT is likely only when ICT investment is accompanied by appropriate change management skills. The study highlights the particular importance of communication, championing and change agency, resources, and the project timescale.

Results were generated from a single case study. It is also acknowledged that it is unclear what impact (if any) a parallel project had on the project under investigation.

The paper highlights the value of effective change management, placing particular emphasis on effective communication during all stages of a project.

The paper explicitly employs change management techniques in order to identify potential problem areas. It recommends longitudinal research be conducted in order to employ the framework during both ex ante and ex post evaluation for a single initiative.

The purpose of this study is to develop an integrated approach to evaluating corporate foresight (CF) studies at all stages of its implementation and to test this approach using the example of a Russian state-owned corporation.

The use of foresight by companies as a part of their strategic activities is growing but still rather limited. To increase the effectiveness of foresight at the corporate level and ensure its justification, special approaches and criteria for its evaluation should be developed. To develop the approach to evaluation of CF which would be useful at all stages of foresight realization, at first, the authors focused the authors’ attention on identification of main challenges, problem and barriers, which arise during foresight process on the one hand, and exploring success factors and lessons learnt from different case studies on the other hand. On the basis of this literature analysis, the authors have formed a long list of evaluation criteria, which reflect accumulated experience in the field and all-important aspects to make foresight project successful and effective. On the next step, the authors related these criteria with stages of foresight realization and evaluation category. For pilot testing of this methodology, the authors used a case of Russian state-owned corporation.

This paper has presented an integrated approach to the evaluation of CF projects. The logic of the evaluation process of CF at all stages of its implementation is proposed; key evaluation topics (concept, objectives, project team, design of the project, project methodology, stakeholders, implementation, resources, results and its dissemination, effects and impact and barriers) are identified, and the corresponding sets of criteria are formed.

The originality of the work lies in using a wide experience of national foresight studies evaluation for corporations. The suggested approach could be used as a framework for CF evaluation. It was tested on the Russian state-owned company RussX.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the underlying logics applied by different project evaluation approaches and to propose an alternative research agenda.

This paper explores the project evaluation literature via conducting a qualitative research applying systematic literature review and thematic analysis.

The project evaluation literature has mainly concentrated on the objective aspects of project evaluation and overlooked the subjective aspects that reflect the temporal, dynamic, complex and subjective nature of today’s projects. The authors propose a meta-framework that helps project practitioners to select an appropriate project evaluation criterion for their projects by considering the strengths and limitations of their preferred project evaluation model as well as making project evaluators aware of the underlying logics associated to diverse project evaluation approaches.

This study suggests that new conceptual approaches to deal with some of the major challenges in the project evaluation field. Practice-based views, narrative analysis and actor-network theory are likely to be useful tools to better understand and cope with the projects’ uncertainty and complexity.

The findings of this research assist project management practitioners and particularly project evaluators to enhance their understanding of the subjectivity, complexity and dynamics of current projects. To increase the reflexivity and resilience of project evaluation practice, this study also proposes new directions to apply different criteria, sub-criteria and indicators to the evaluation practice.

The originality of this study relies on transcending the conventional objective and rational approaches prevailing in current project evaluation practices. It proposes a research agenda that pave the way to address the shortcomings of conventional project evaluation practice.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the line of research on the ex ante valuation of the economic payoff from strategic alliances. The paper links a firm's related pre‐alliance situation to an alliance announcement, to predict how investors value the alliance.

The researchers collected data on marketing alliances in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. Using an empirical model, three hypotheses predicting how investors value alliances in the light of their knowledge of how the firm is doing before the alliance announcement were tested.

The findings indicate that investors assign higher value to marketing alliances for firms with lower inventory liquidity and product demand. Investors, in fact, rewarded firms with weak pre‐alliance positions, indicating that the alliance was perceived as a useful strategy to turnaround the weak situation.

As is common with other event study research, the study is unable to predict the long‐term relationship between alliance announcements and performance of the alliance. A positive evaluation at the time of the announcement may not necessarily translate into long‐term success.

This research provides an important lesson for firms hoping to reap financial rewards from their alliance announcements. Firms may do well to time such alliance announcements to correspond with their internal situations.

This paper is believed to be one of the first to consider an additional piece of firm information in addition to an alliance announcement to gauge investor valuation of alliances. The research therefore extends existing research and offers a more complete understanding of how investors value alliances at their formation. The findings should be of interest to firms contemplating alliances, and enhance understanding of investor decision making.

This article aims to investigate whether and how the application of European state aid rules to the public funding of public broadcasting organisations in Europe has advanced public broadcasting as a policy process and made it more adaptive to the challenges of the digital age.

The findings are based on a triangulation of literature study, document analysis and expert interviews (with over 50 stakeholders involved with the topic of state aid and public broadcasting).

The article consists of four main parts. Firstly, the issue of state aid and public broadcasting is contextualised within the heated discussions on the legitimacy of European intervention in a cultural policy domain such as broadcasting. Secondly, the analytical framework is presented. Thirdly, analysis of specific state aid cases follows. Finally, some conclusions and recommendations are outlined. The article concludes that European state aid policy has furthered a public service media project in the EU member states.

The article fills a void in current fragmented and often overly descriptive or overly ideological assessments of the relevance of state aid policy for public service broadcasting.

The paper contributes to ongoing policy debates about the issue of state aid policy for public service broadcasting.

The article fills a void in current fragmented and often overly descriptive or overly ideological assessments of the relevance of state aid policy for public service broadcasting.

The purpose of this papers is to highlight the applicability of integrated simulation models for national development planning to different issues and contexts. Specifically, the authors describe one such model, the Millennium Institute’s T21 model, which is used to support planning in various countries, and explore in detail the case of Swaziland to demonstrate the model’s usefulness at different levels in the planning process.

Integrated sustainable development planning models using the system dynamics (SD) modeling method have been designed to help overcome these obstacles and support decision-makers in the assessment of alternative policies. Such models are laboratory replicas of the critical mechanisms driving development in a country while being grounded in the historical data available. They can be used to perform simulation-based policy experiments that are otherwise impossible in the real world.

The proposed approach has facilitated the reporting on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), as well as on the cross-sector long-term ex ante evaluation of the country’s “Economic Recovery Strategy” and a proposed “Fiscal Adjustment” policy. These assessments provided essential information for improving the quality of the decisions made. Such information cannot be obtained by the application of purely economic models or sectoral tools, that are not including the fundamental feedback structures that shape development in the long run and determine its sustainability.

The new generation of global long-term Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) covers a far broader range of issues and indicators than the MDGs. The T21-Swaziland model only offers a limited subset of such issues, and future research will focus on achievements and challenges in expanding its scope to encompass the SDGs.

The T21 model has become one of the fundamental planning instruments of the country, and it has been used to evaluate national planning documents and other suggested strategies with respect to whether they are sufficient for reaching the long-term goals. Such information is then used as a basis for revision of development plans and adoption or rejection of suggested policy packages.

The MDGs (and their expanded follow-up, the SDGs) have been important step toward better governance, as they quantify key indicators of development and thereby allow for an evaluation of the degree to which these quantified aspirations are actually achieved. In addition to such hind-sight evaluations, ex ante evaluations are equally important for improvement of the quality of the decisions made. The authors propose and test a tool to support such type of evaluation, supporting integrated planning and model-based governance.