Implementing Evidence-based Management (Roussea) Flashcards
What is evidence-based management?
(1) The process of translating human behaviour principles then (2) into practice, (3) to solve organisational problems.
Example: Making Feedback People Friendly
(1) principle: human beings can process only a limited amount of information.
(2) practice: provide feedback on a small set of critical performance indicators using terms people readily understand.
(3) solve organisational problems: performance of unit improves.
What should managers consider when using principles for evidence-based management?
Ask yourself:
- Is the principle credible?
- Is the principle’s insight suited to the setting? (I.e. what indicators can be applied to the unit).
Attribution Bias
Managers may make incorrect assumptions about the causes of success or failure, impacting decision-making, relationships, and hinder teamwork and cooperation.
Types of Attribution Bias
- Fundamental Attribution Bias
- Self-serving bias
Fundamental attribution bias
When people overestimate the influence of other people’s personality traits and underestimate the impact of situational factors when explaining the causes of an event of behaviour.
Why is evidence-based management important?
We want to improve the quality of managerial/ organisational decision-making. Evidence-based management encourages managers to look for principles that account for their observations & to pay attention to evidence derived from scientific methods. Higher-quality managerial decisions are developed with available facts, grounded in reliable & valid information.
Open-book management (Case, 1995; Ferrante & Rousseau, 2001)
- Use of discrete facts (indicative of quality i.e. employee attitudes & behaviour, machine performance, customers interactions).
- Use of organisational fact finding
- Use of experimentation (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2001)
Big E evidence
Generalisable knowledge regarding cause-effect connections derived from scientific methods.
Little E evidence
Evidence that is local/organisation specific through root cause analysis & other fact-based approaches.
Fact-based approaches
Data systematically gathered in a particular setting to inform local decisions
How should you assess the quality of research evidence?
Ask yourself:
- Is this strong or weak evidence?
How do you assess whether you have strong or weak evidence?
Ask yourself:
- Is the evidence based on rules of scientific inference?
- Is the evidence gathered through randomised, controlled tests? (These tests are deemed stronger than longitudinal cohort analyses).
Evidence-based practice (Sackett, Straus, Richardson, Rosenberg, & Haynes, 2000)
“Evidence-based practice is a paradigm for making decisions that integrate the best available research evidence with decision maker expertise & client/customer preferences to guide practice toward more desirable results.”
What are the features of evidence-based practice?
- learning about cause-effect connections in professional practices
- isolating the variations that measurably affect desired outcomes.
- creating a culture of evidence-based decision making & research participation
- using information-sharing communities to reduce overuse, underuse, & misuse of specific practices
- building decision support to promote practices the evidence validates, along with techniques & artifacts that make the decision easier to execute of perform (e.g., checklists, protocols, or standing orders).
- having individual, organisational, & institutional factors to promote access knowledge & its use.
How do managers successfully implement decisions?
To minimise the possibility of failure in implementation, managers need to be competent. Organisations should ensure managers engage with known management practices & real learning, not fads or false conclusions.
What does real learning look like?
Learning valid principles governing organisations & human behaviour. These principles are repeatable over time & generalisable across situations.
Examples of real management practices
- Goal setting & feedback (Locke & Latham, 1984)
- Feedback & Redesign (Goodman, 2001)
Again, how can managers improve decision-making?
Managers need to learn why their decisions are wrong. They need to be able to use evidence (Big e & Little e) well to gain a comparative advantage over their less competent counterparts.
Organisational Legitimacy is a product of evidence-based management
Legitimacy is a result of making decisions in a systematic & informed fashion, thus making a firm’s actions readily justifiable in the eyes of stakeholders.
Why has it been hard for managers to implement evidence-based practice? (Research-practice gap)
- managerial decisions involve time lags & little feedback (e.g. hiring decisions).
- managerial decisions are influenced by other stakeholders who impose constraints (involves politicking & compromise) (Miller, 1992)
- managers may not always know they are making a decision given that there is an array of interactions that compose managerial work (Walsh & Randall, 2001)
- Management is often a private sector activity, so there is no body of shared knowledge, lacking shared scientific knowledge to add weight to an evidence-based decision.
- Future managers (business school students) need to be taught how to use scientific evidence in decision-making (e.g., there is a lack of models for evidence-based management).
Uniqueness paradox (Sackett et al, 2000)
The uniqueness paradox can interfere with transfer of research findings across settings - the belief that the particulars of an organisation, its practices, & its problems are special & unique (Martin, Feldman, Hatch, & Sitkin, 1983)
What must managers note about evidence-based practice
Evidence-based practice is not one-size fits-all. It’s the best current evidence coupled with informed expert judgement. Managers should learn to experiment & use research findings. The evidence becomes a guide for action & (evidence-based) solutions, which managers adopt to particular settings.
Active learning + Active Practice
Self-reflection + Feedback
