Success and Failure

Abstract

Since program participants are inclined to view evaluators as a threat to themselves and their program, and since such a perception can restrict the flow of information about a program to the evaluators, the authors attempted to avoid such alienation by assuring members that they would make no judgments of success or failure. The case is the American Sociological Association's Project to Improve Undergraduate Teaching in Sociology. A conceptual framework for the analysis is borrowed from organizational theory. Such concepts as goal succession, goal displacement, and goal perspectives help illuminate the program as an ongoing organization. The data consist of participant- observation field notes and published reports by the projects themselves.