 Evaluation as a moral practice: The case of virtue ethicsGabel Taggart and Jen Zenor Evaluation and Program Planning, 2022, vol. 94, issue C Abstract: Evaluation is a moral practice. With this in mind, we look to moral philosophy and the theory of virtue ethics as a case study to identify instances where virtue ethics undergirds professional evaluation. To aid in this we also contrast virtue ethics with the more commonly discussed philosophies of consequentialism and deontology and their corresponding evaluation practices. An important question we hope to address is: why does it matter for evaluators to understand connections between moral philosophy and practice? We argue that a greater awareness of moral philosophy will aid evaluators in seeing both the plurality of moral considerations that undergird an evaluation practice, as well as aid in their ability to make judgements among these considerations. In particular, identifying the moral perspectives that ground evaluation practices will aid in evaluation flexibility and use by helping evaluators to tailor evaluations to the situations and moral issue at hand and bringing evaluations explicitly closer to their implicit moral roots. Keywords: Consequentialism; Deontology; Virtue ethics; Flexibility and use; Moral philosophy; Professional evaluation (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:epplan:v:94:y:2022:i:c:s0149718922000945 DOI: 10.1016/j.evalprogplan.2022.102140 Access Statistics for this article Evaluation and Program Planning is currently edited by Jonathan A. Morell More articles in Evaluation and Program Planning from Elsevier |
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