Is the evidence based management movement dead?

When you go to see a doctor, you would like him or her to make medical decisions based on scientific evidence and research. Not stick the first needle or pill in you, because he or she heard rumours that it just might work. However, in management we are still in the middle ages of science, where the alchemists still try to make gold from lead. And by alchemists I mean all types of managers (managers, consultants, coaches, interim-managers, project managers, etc.). One of the reasons why managers still make decisions based on anecdotal evidence, gut feeling or a whim is the fact that management is not a profession. Well, perhaps it is, but we lack a body of knowledge and skills. Everybody with decent qualifications can become a manager in contrast with nurses, judges or engineers. Management is still treated as a 'skill' and if you have a better story than the next guy, you just found yourself a new career.

Around the year 2000, the evidence based management movement emerged. It is a movement to explicitly use the current, best evidence in management decision making. Its roots are in evidence based medicine, a quality movement to apply the scientific method to medical practice.

Evidence-based management (EBMgt) entails managerial decisions and organizational practices informed by the best available scientific evidence. Like its counterparts in medicine (e.g., Sackett, et al., 2000) and education (e.g., Thomas & Pring, 2004), the judgments EBMgt entails also consider the circumstances and ethical concerns managerial decisions involve. In contrast to medicine and education, however, EBMgt today is only hypothetical. Contemporary managers and management educators make limited use of the vast behavioral science evidence base relevant to effective management practice (Walshe & Rundall, 1999; Rousseau, 2005, 2006; Pfeffer & Sutton, 2001). (Source: en.wikipedia.org)

Last month the annual Academy of Management meeting was hosted in Chicago and a couple of my colleagues who work for Universities went to meet people and take in the latest developments on Organisational and Management Science. The Evidence Based Management movement is still there, but progress is really slow. Most developments are exchanged in closed communities and you really have to make an effort to dig up new information and stay in the loop of recent developments. I'm now in the process of preparing an interview (together with my friend Coert Visser) with the four figureheads of the Evidence Based Management movement. These are Denise M. Rousseau, Tracy Altman, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Bob Sutton. Interviews take time, but I'm confident we'll get some answers. Wait and see what they have to say about the future of Evidence Based Management.