This is a summary of the course Evidence Based Management at the University of Amsterdam . The summary includes all the required lectures and tutorials
Management professionals should…
… work on important business/organizational problems and opportunities (rather than trivial issues)
… do what is more likely to work (rather than what is unlikely to work or has little effect)
Evidence based management has an organization. This is the Centre of Evidence-Based Management
1. What do we mean by evidence-based?
When we think on making decisions, we always use evidence, but that’s not the same as adopting an
evidence based approach.
All practitioners always use evidence in their decisions on evidence but
- Pay limited attention to quality and relevance of evidence
- Use limited sources and types of evidence
- Are easily pushed off track when trying to make better informed decisions
Decisions about are important problems/opportunities and most likely solutions should be based on the
best available evidence.
Evidence means any relevant information/data
- Scientific findings
- Organizational/context data
- Professional expertise
- Stakeholder concerns/perceptions
Where did the idea of evidence-based practice come from?
It started with medicine. Before the 1990 medicine wasn’t
something that was shared between professionals. From
then on, evidence-based practice took a lift and became very
important. We can also see other fields have been affected
by it.
2. What is evidence-based management?
Transforming real problems into a more systematic approach. The basic idea of evidence-based practice
is that good-quality decisions should be based on a combination of critical thinking and the best
available evidence.
It is an approach to decision-making and day-to day work practice that helps practitioners to critically
evaluate the extent to which they can trust the evidence they have at hand. It also helps practitioners to
identify, find and evaluate additional evidence relevant to their decisions.
It is the:
- Conscientious (effort, trying hard)
,- Explicit (clarity, writing down, communicating) and
- Judicious (making judgment of reliability, considering trustworthiness, believability)
- Use of evidence
- From multiple sources to
- Increase the likelihood for a favourable outcome by
- Taking a structured/stepped approach
It is about the process
We don’t talk about certainties but probabilities (X is more likely to work than Y or doing nothing).
Evidence-based practice is about making decisions through the conscientious, explicit and judicious use
of the best available evidence from multiple sources by
1. Asking: translating a practical issue or problem into an answerable question
2. Acquiring: systematically searching for and retrieving the evidence
3. Appraising: critically judging the trustworthiness and relevance of the evidence
4. Aggregating: weighing and pulling together the evidence
5. Applying: incorporating the evidence into the decision-making process
6. Assessing: evaluating the outcome of the decision taken
to increase the likelihood of a favorable outcome.
What counts as evidence? When we say ‘evidence’’, we mean information, facts or data supporting (or
contradicting) a claim, assumption or hypothesis.
Why do we need evidence-based practice? Most management decisions are not based on the best
available evidence. Instead, practitioners often prefer to make decisions rooted solely in their personal
experience. Practitioners frequently also take the work practices of other organizations as evidence.
Through benchmarking and socalled ‘best practices’ practitioners sometimes copy what other
organizations are doing without critically evaluating whether these practices are actually effective and, if
they are, whether they are also likely to work in a different context.
,3. How do you do it?
An example: employee engagement What is it? It is seen as a good solution to manage your
employees. Very popular management/human resources idea. Used by many medium-large sized
organization and seen as driver of employee performance. A but like commitment a but like satisfaction,
who knows?
Example of employee engagement (EE)
- Suppose you and your organization and senior management team believe that low EE is somehow a
problem in your organization. And because it is, you should measure or look at your EE scores and
attempt to increase “low” scores somehow. How would you (a) approach this problem and (b)
identify a solution from an evidence based practice approach?
What sources of evidence should be considered?
Instead of basing a decision on personal judgment alone, an evidence-based practitioner finds out what
is known by looking for evidence from multiple sources. According to the principles of evidence-based
practice, evidence from four sources should be taken into account:
THE SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE: Findings from empirical studies published in academic journals.
THE ORGANIZATION: Data, facts and figures gathered from the organization. It can be financial data
such as cash flow or costs, or business measures such as return on investment or market share. It can
come from customers or clients in the form of customer satisfaction, repeat business or product returns
statistics. It can also come from employees through information about retention rates or levels of job
satisfaction. Evidence from the organization can be ‘hard’ numbers such as staff turnover rates, medical
errors or productivity levels, but it can also include ‘soft’ elements such as perceptions of the
organization’s culture or attitudes towards senior management.
, PRACTITIONERS: The professional experience and judgment of practitioners. Professional experience
differs from intuition and personal opinion because it reflects the specialized knowledge acquired by
repeated experience and practice of specialized activities such as playing the violin or making a cost
estimate.
STAKEHOLDERS: The values and concerns of people who may be affected by the decision. Gathering
evidence from stakeholders is not just important for ethical reasons. Understanding stakeholder values
and concerns also provides a frame of reference from which to analyze evidence from other sources. It
provides important information about the way in which decisions will be received and whether the
outcomes of those decisions are likely to be successful.
Your thoughts: It is do-able? How long would it take? Is it worth it?
Paradox of evidence-based management: Seems nobody really disagrees with evidence-based practice
in principle… some evidence is better than nothing. So why isn’t it happening much (or not at all)? It’s
the barriers.
4. Why do we need it? Understanding and overcoming barriers to better-informed decision-making.
What gets in the way of evidence based practice in general?
- Individual and group cognitive bias
- Fad, fashions Example:
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