Making Memory in State Government: Fighting the Effects of High Administrative Turnover with Participatory Evaluation Approaches

Abstract

State government agencies face a unique challenge: frequent, regular turnover of top administration, in concurrence with the election cycle. However, there is little current research on the effects of administrative turnover in state government specifically. Several trends can be observed in the public sector that may be exacerbated by high administrative turnover: weak organizational learning, low levels of organizational memory, lack of encouragement of capacity building from management, and negative behavior of disempowered government workers. There is also a gap in the literature regarding the influence of evaluation on state government work, and whether it can help with the observed organizational trends. This paper examines whether participatory evaluation approaches can combat loss of organizational memory and learning in the turbulent environment of state government agencies.