The Program Evaluation Standards in International Settings

12 Sandy TautFrom a more general point of view, we could explain these cultural differences in the roleof professional standards using cultural dimensions and concepts. For example, one could arguethat high-conservatism societies tend to not use Standards. In those cultures, the emphasis on themaintenance of the status quo keeps people from engaging in behavior that might disrupt thegroup solidarity(in this case the group of evaluators). The same may be true for collectivistcultures. In those cultures, a “socially-oriented achievement motivation” (Berry et al., 1997, Vol.3, p. 25) might prevent individual accountability on the basis of Standards to be valued. Incultures with strong ingroups, “group achievement rather than individual expertise is valued”(Rohlen, 1979, in: Berry et al., 1997, Vol. 3, p. 380). In countries with “Confucian work ethics”(The Chinese Culture Connection, 1987, in: Berry et al., 1997, Vol. 3, p. 373), work is “a moralduty to the collectivity.”In addition, for example, in China (Chen & Uttal, 1988, in: Berry et al., 1997, Vol. 3, p.139), “effort is regarded as more important than ability in explaining academic outcomes than inthe United States.” Extrapolated to the professional context, accountability based on Standardsof proper conduct seems difficult. Also, in certain cultures, the motivation of people to performis lower than in others. For example, an underlying assumption of Organizational Developmentis that the organizational members have the motivation “‘to make […] a higher level ofcontribution to the attainment of organizational goals […].’ [French & Bell, 1990, p. 44]Probably this assumption does not hold true in many developing countries” (in: Berry et al.,1997, Vol. 3, p. 394).One should also take into account current and future developments in Evaluation acrossthe world. As more indigenous evaluators are being trained in western settings or by westernevaluators, the Standards will probably become more widespread even in cultures where theiruse would not come about without such foreign influence. Additional dissemination might, ofcourse, come from those western evaluators engaged in evaluations in foreign cultural settings.Even though, in some cultures, evaluators do not and will not rely on Standards for judgingprofessional performance, the Standards can still provide helpful ideas on important aspects ofwhat good evaluations should look like. However, even these ideas need to be relevant to thespecific cultural backgrounds and values, making an analysis of their cross-culturaltransferability a sensible task.A Values-Based Analysis of the Standards’ Cross-Cultural TransferabilityFor examining the Standards’ transferability to other cultures, it is important to analyzethe Evaluation Standards regarding the North American values they reflect, as represented by theJoint Committee members. Values have a varying degree of generality across cultures. Likevalues, we consider some of the Standards as being universal. These Standards (e.g., PracticalProcedures) need no further discussion from a cross-cultural point of view. Yet other Standards(e.g. Rights of Human Subjects) are unique to North American culture and lack transferability toother cultures.