Social Construction of Reality - Bad Request

to take center stage. Stakeholder thinking along these lines fell into roughly four
categories: assailing elephants and sacred cows; increasing ownership; reifying The
School District’s vision, mission, goals; changing the organizational culture.
One unexpected process use which emerged was the ability of the sheer process
of program evaluation, when done in depth, to assail truths or situations that have, up
until that point, been ignored such as “a belief or system that is treated with much respect
and is not usually criticized” (Heacock, 2003, p. 405). One stakeholder termed this
“attack[ing] the sacred cows” (Interview, April 8). Another stakeholder conceived of the
situation in terms of elephants and cows. His entire response, though lengthy, merits
consideration.
[Program Evaluation is] a way to ferret out dysfunction…..by bringing
stakeholders to the table, it kind of puts the elephant in the middle of the room
and either everyone kind of testily agrees to continue not to see the Emperor has
no clothes or you have to address it. And so….therefore you can either continue
the culture if it’s bad or you can all agree, and I think that’s what would happen,
is that everyone would agree. Let’s address this issue and by addressing the sacred
cows knock down the silo walls, increase communication, convince people that
things aren’t just the preserve of Mr. X because it’s always been his program or
her program and therefore there’s a sanctity and it’s inviolate…you dare not
trespass into that program. I think that’s one of the things, one of the good things
that could come out it that might not show up in the box score necessarily.
[Program evaluation] can change the culture of an organization by breaking down
barriers and silos and by identifying the elephant in the room that sometimes is
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