The rise of ‘evidence-based management’ (EBM) is read as the latest form of resistance to pluralism—one that might prove particularly hard to refuse given the popularity of many other forms of evidence-based practices. So I explore the prospects for EBM within organization studies and some of its implications for those who value the continuation of pluralistic forms of analysis in organizational research.
In 1993 Jeffrey Pfeffer bemoaned the proliferation of theoretical perspectives in the field of organizational studies. He advocates the paradigmatic unity which was enforced by a group of scholars who imposed their views in the field of economics. This was a good thing, because it enabled coherent research and more advancements in the field of economics. Organization studies could benefit in the same way. His appeal fell on deaf ears and it seemed that the pluralists of methodology in social sciene had won the battle. Learmonth is still not convinced. He worries that the evidence based management movement is a political project and that the emergence of the evidence based practice will lead to methodological fundamentalism. In social science, he says, evidence is never just there for the researcher to find it, it is always necessary to construct the evidence in some way, a process that is inherently ideological and always contestable.
Update: I reread the short paper and distilled the main arguments made by Mark.
- Evidence based management limits (what counts as) legitimate research methodologies (leads to fundamentalism).
- What works tends to assume elite definitions of effectiveness.
- Evidence based management has a top management bias.
- Evidence is not objective or neutral.This leads to philosophical discussions on science.
- Evidence based management is a political project.
- Evidence based management threatens funding for independent research.
