Your answer will be discussed during the block 2 of the Round Table.
The deadline for submitting comments is May 13th 2008 at 16:30 – Central Europe Summer Time
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Narratives and organizational theorists used in impact study on
health communication campaigns
World-renowned authors Backers and Rogers (1993) used narratives, commentaries by organizational theorists and synthesis in their three-year study of health communication campaigns in the 1980s and early 1990s funded by the USA-based Center for Substance Abuse Prevention.
Their work is one of the few books exploring the impact of six (five in the USA, one in Turkey) major health communication campaigns on organizations that collaborated on them. Backers and Rogers were also main authors of the first book, Designing Health Communication Campaigns, which focused on factors influencing success of the campaigns, and to explore the impact of these campaigns of the various organizations.
Backer, Thomas E. and Rogers, Everett M. 1993, Organizational aspects of health communication: What works?, Sage Publications Inc., Pp 216-225
Twelve generalizations
They identified 12 generalizations from their narratives, commentaries by organizational theorists and synthesis:
1. Prestige – The prestige of organizations involved in a health communication campaign is a factor in a campaign’s success.
2. Insider-Outsider relationships – Effective relationships between “insider” and “outsider” organizations contribute to the success of health communication campaigns.
3. Re-invention – Campaign elements are frequently re-invented and modified as organizations contribute experiences from other campaigns, and as a general campaign approach is fitted to local community conditions.
4. Long-term institutional change – Strategies for long-term institutional change in organizational culture, and for creating permanent organizations to repave temporary systems, are used by organizations involved in a campaign to facilitate long-term, behavioural change in their target audience.
5. Consensus vision – A campaign is more likely to be successful if it has an overall vision statement that represents a consensus among the organizations that collaborate in the campaign.
6. Charismatic organizational leaders – Charismatic leaders of organizations involved in health communication campaigns help organizations collaborate in successful ways.
7. Inter-organizational collaboration – Inter-organizational collaboration can speed the diffusion of an innovation through a health communication approach.
8. Organizational career path – Participation in a health communication campaign can affect the career path of individuals in the collaborating organizations.
9. Organizational culture conflict – Differences in organizational cultures, such as those between government and private organizations, can limit the success of health communication campaigns unless these differences are overcome.
10. Timing – The timing of health communication campaigns is a crucial factor in its success., and timing often rests on the activities or decisions of organizations involved in the campaign.
11. Reframing – Reframing health communication campaign behaviour in terms of organizational theory can facilitate understanding of the key factors in a campaign’s success.
12. Inter-organizational control/ decision making issues – Transorganizational issues of collaboration, control and resistance among groups of organzations affect the changes for the success of health communication campaigns.
Dick de Jong
Information and Communication Officer,
IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre
Comment by Dick de Jong — 13 May 2008 @ 16:27
Question: who typically initiates impact assessment? When? How long after ‘project completion’, involving whom? Who pays this?
Peter
Comment by Peter J. Bury (IRC) — 13 May 2008 @ 19:40