On Effectiveness

Front Cover
Giorgio Ausenda
Boydell Press, 2003 - Business & Economics - 258 pages
How 'effectiveness', increasingly a measurement of value replacing a simple financial result, can best be judged across a wide variety of fields.

The purpose of this volume is to examine the concept and measurement of 'effectiveness', now increasingly employed to evaluate the kinds of operations where success cannot be judged in monetary terms. A philosopher comments on thedevelopment of the concepts of 'cause' and 'effect' from classical times to the present; a systems engineer looks at the possibility of using the parameter for the evaluation of coherent systems; a restoration ecologist discussesthe parameters used in reforestation and their relation to effectiveness considered at different levels; a sociologist relates the methodologies used in this discipline to evaluate the effectiveness of health programs; an expertof education discusses the applicability of the measurement of effectiveness to the functioning of schools; a specialist in aid to developing countries describes the effectiveness of operations from the implementation of major projects to demining operations; a consultant on foreign aid highlights the cultural perception of efficacy in developing countries; finally, an anthropologist examines the relationship between 'effectiveness' and 'efficiency' in food intake and production between two different populations living in the same region, a semi-nomadic agro-pastoralist and a settled agriculturalist one. A concluding discussion notes the salience of the concept of effectiveness inmany 'living' phenomena, including sociocultural ones, and the possibility of using them better to understand their evolution.

 

Contents

ON THE HISTORY OF THE CONCEPT OF EFFECTIVENESS R Pozzo
13
effectiveness in Latin sources Effectiveness and efficacy in the thinking of
30
Introduction The idea of a dynamical system Communication control interconnection
48
former trajectory Efficiency visāvis effectiveness On the ecosystem reference debate
66
Effectiveness and applied social research in historical context The problematics
93
Discussion
127
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF AID H Thompson
137
THE CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION OF EFFICACY J van Willigen
159
A COMPARISON BETWEEN SETTLED
177
Introduction Territory and population Timing and methods of fieldwork Comparison
208
INDEX
243
Copyright

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