Date and time: Tuesday 26 May 4.30pm -5.30pm ACST
Topic: Governance & Strategic Evaluation – Quo vadis?
Location: online via zoom, details will be shared just prior to the event
Presenter: Colin Sharp | Adelaide University
Register online by: 25 May 2026

Event description: 

“Strategic Evaluation” is a term coined by Sharp (1996a, 1996b, 1998a, 1998b, 1999) to encompass the role of evaluation in the strategy, performance and governance of an organisation. Governance Professionals, especially Board Directors have an important, but seldom recognized, role in the highest level of organizational performance evaluation. Recent failures of corporate governance in a variety of organisations have prompted concerns as to the purpose, competencies and professionalism of Board Directors. Similarly, the emergence of the disturbing laxity of Bord Directors in upholding their governance roles and goals suggests the need for a better way forward, especially developing better evaluation and accountability processes.
Here it is proposed to require Directors’ commitment to a standardized goal attainment contract such as developed in the Directors’ Effectiveness Self-Evaluation Research Tool (D.E.S.E.R.T.). strategic evaluation model (Sharp, 1999; ). This model entails directors clarify their governance role and associated goals, then identify the relevant risks of various potential outcomes so as to set Goal Attainment Scales for their evaluation and accountability. The model will be illustrated and offered for discussion.

Presenter details:

Associate Professor Colin Sharp, PhD, FAES, FGIA has been a Foundation Committee Member (1987- 1990), Foundation Chair of the Committee for Ethics and Standards in Evaluation (1988 – 1995), Editor of the Evaluation Journal of Australasia and former President (1994 – 1995) of the Australasian Evaluation Society (AES). His contribution to program evaluation has been recognised by receiving the Outstanding Contribution to Evaluation Award (formerly the ET&S Award) in 1992, and given the title of Fellow of the AES (2003, Life Member, 2024), as well as being featured in the Evaluation Journal of Australia (Evaluator Perspective (sagepub.com) 2021. He has been a Member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) for over ten years, and Fellow of the Governance Institute of Australia (GIA) for 15 years. He was Chair of the Subject Management Team on the public sector courses in the Diploma of Applied Corporate Governance for the GIA (2009 – 2025) and member of the GIA Academic Board. Since 2022 he has been an Adjudicator for the Australasian Annual Report Awards Special Award for Governance.
He offers over 40 years of experience in evaluation, management and governance roles.

This seminar will be recorded and available on the member portal for AES members only.

This free event has been organised by the SA Regional Network of the AES. Our seminar series provides an opportunity for you to meet with AES members and others in the evaluation community and to share and learn from the experiences of fellow evaluators. Please ensure you have access to your email address to receive the zoom details. Please also check your email address is correct on your registration form before submitting. 

Session start times:

SA, NT: 4.30pm

VIC, NSW, ACT, QLD, TAS : 5.00pm

WA: 3.00pm

NZ: 7.00pm

For other time zones please go to https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html