Governments of countries including Norway, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and Australia are presently experimenting with approaches to evaluating the research institutions they support. IDRC and other donor institutions have for decades been conducting program and project evaluations. The fact is, our methodologies and approaches for conducting these evaluations are much further along than are those for conducting institutional assessments. Clearly, some configuration of the key variables of organizational capacity does make a difference in institutional functioning and performance. Donors need a way of evaluating these to learn the circumstances of where and how to invest.
Institutional performance is of central importance to capacity.
Generally, it is the need or desire to change performance that drives people to engage in institutional evaluations. Performance can be conceived as the tip of the iceberg, the fruits of organizational capacity made visible to the outside world. In the case of research organizations, these fruits are the research and training products and services as well as changes within the organization itself, such as its organizational learning and adaptiveness over time so as to maintain relevance. As IDRC develops a more strategic approach to institutional strengthening activities, proportionally greater resources may be directed to broader forms of institutional support. To direct these resources effectively, IDRC will need to approach the measurement of performance and the diagnosis of institutional need more systematically than it has in the past.