Evidence-based management

Decisions and practices that use evidence to make decisions

Evidence based management (EBMgt) is an emerging movement to explicitly use the current, best evidence in management and decision making. It is part of the larger movement towards evidence based practices.

Evidence based management entails managerial decisions and organizational practices informed by the best available evidence. While, like its counterparts in medicine, and education EBMgt considers the circumstances and ethical concerns managerial decisions involve, it tends not to make extensive use of behavioral science relevant to effective management practice. Evidence based management proceeds from the premise that using better, deeper logic and employing facts to the extent possible permits leaders to do their jobs better.

The weak form alternatives to evidence based anything include hearsay, opinion, rhetoric, discourse, advice (opinion), self deception, bias, belief, fallacy, or advocacy. The stronger forms include concerns about what counts as evidence, types of evidence, what evidence is available, sought or possible, who decides and pays for what evidence to be collected, and that evidence needs to be interpreted. Also there are the limitations to empiricism as well argued in the historical debate between empiricism and rationalism which is usually assumed to be resolved by Immanuel Kant by saying the two are inextricably interwoven. We reason what evidence is fair and what the evidence means (Critique of Practical Reason). Critical theorists have raised objections to the claims made by those promoting evidence based management. From this perspective, what counts as "evidence" is considered as intrinsically problematic and contested because there are different ways of looking at social problems. Furthermore, in line with perspectives from critical management studies, "management" is not necessarily an automatic good thing—it often involves the exercise of power and the exploitation of others. One response is to include a balanced treatment of such issues in reviewing and interpreting the research literature for practice. Another response is to reconsider EBMgt in terms of cybernetic theory, whereby the "requisite variety" of evidence compiled across decision makers is critical because "compiling more evidence does not necessarily imply compiling a wider range of knowledge types"

Some of the publications in this area are Evidence Based Management, Harvard Business Review, and Hard Facts, Dangerous Half Truths and Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence Based Management. Evidence based management is also being applied in specific industries and professions, including software development. Other areas are crime prevention (Sherman et al. (2002), public management, and manufacturing.