The Relationship between Motivation and Evaluation Capacity in Community-based Organizations

Community-based organizations increasingly face the need to systematically gather and provide data, information, and insights on the quality of their services and performances to governments, donors, and funding agencies. To meet these demands, community-based organizations have identified the need to build their own evaluation capacity. Increasing the evaluation capacity of an organization requires evaluation capacity building at an individual level, which might be affected by other factors like employee work motivation. This quantitative study uncovers the relationship between employee work motivation and individual evaluation capacity using the Multidimensional Work Motivation Scale and the Evaluation Capacity Assessment Instrument. I found that employees with higher intrinsic motivation have higher evaluation capacity, whereas, those with higher amotivation have lower evaluation capacity. Apart from that, this study also investigates the relationships motivation - evaluative thinking, and evaluation capacity - evaluative thinking, finding that individual evaluation capacity and evaluative thinking are closely related. This study elucidates the link between employee motivation, evaluation capacity, and evaluative thinking, which will not only benefit the organizations to better their practice of evaluation, but also help the employees to make progress in their career paths.