Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Jeffrey Pfeffer on the state of affairs of evidence based management

Last week I received mail from Stanford. Jeffrey Pfeffer had returned after some extensive traveling and found the time to answer my four key questions. Here you can read his take on the current state of affairs of evidence based management. I'm always grateful if people take time out of in their busy schedules to help me out.








1. What do you view as the core idea and purpose of EBM? What do you think would be the benefit for organizations and society as a whole if management would be based more on evidence?

The core idea is simple and seemingly common sense to make decisions, to the extent possible, on the basis of the best facts and evidence available at the time, and to update ideas and decisions as new evidence becomes available. The purpose is to make sounder decisions by basing choices on the best theory and facts instead of on belief or ideology, unreliable retrospective consideration of experience, and fads and fashion. The benefits could be profound, as at least in the United States, in domains ranging from criminology to education to business management, many unsound decisions are made wasting resources and affording poor outcomes.

2. What progress has the EBM movement currently been making and is there evidence of evidence based management getting a foothold in organizations?

I think progress has been halting and even in medicine, there is evidence of much backsliding. For instance, when data showed that radiological screening for breast cancer should be postponed until age 50, there was an outcry and there seems to be no will to implement these findings, even though they are based on a lot of science. In management, senior managers seem to trust consultants, their own judgement, and casual benchmarking much more than they do the facts.

3. What future do you envision for EBM in (research and practice)?

In research, we need in management the same sorts of efforts that have occurred in other fields--summarizing the state of knowledge (and updating such summaries) so they can be used by practitioners. We also need more research on the barriers to implementing EBM practices and how to overcome such barriers. In practice, we need collectives and associations that push EBM forward, much as there have been in other fields.

Thank you very much for your time and efforts.

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