Measuring Intangible Values Rethinking How to Evaluate Socially Beneficial Actions (PDF)

Free Download Marie Harder, "Measuring Intangible Values: Rethinking How to Evaluate Socially Beneficial Actions "
English | ISBN: 0367500574 | 2020 | 182 pages | PDF | 3 MB
This book explores the complex problem of how to measure the 'success' of social organisations, projects and activities. Whether improving a local situation, organizing a campaign around sustainability, or assessing the intangible effects of perceived social benefits, currently we have only have a very limited range of mechanisms for judging effectiveness. On the one hand, a market-driven logic demands that qualitative perceptions and experiences are quantified into simplified and numerically defined variables. On the other, community projects are left un-assessed, as one-off outcomes of local and situated processes that must somehow automatically 'make things better'. For academics, researchers and other professionals working in this field this has resulted in the deep frustration of not being able to assess the things that are most centrally important: higher human values such as integrity, trust, respect, equality and social justice.