Evidence-Based Management: What’s the Evidence?

Decision-makers in health care, government, and other sectors are interested in the potential of evidence-based management (EBMgt) to improve organizational performance. But before adopting EBMgt, they want to know more about its effectiveness and about how claims for its effectiveness have been developed.

HPME faculty member Whitney Berta is part of a team that is shedding light on the nature and role of EBMgt. Her fellow researchers are Melanie Kohn, a doctoral candidate in HPME’s Health Services Research Program, and the University of Alberta’s Trish Reay.

“Evidence-based decision-making is a major force in clinical practice and theory,” Berta notes. “Recently, there’s been a significant increase in calls for an analogous science of evidence-based management (EBMgt): the systematic use of best available evidence to improve management practice.”

An exhaustive literature review led Berta and her fellow researchers to two related messages:

Not all evidence on the efficacy of management practices is created equal
All responses to “best management evidence” ought to be based on the strength of the evidence itself.

The optimal approach, Berta counsels, is to “take small-scale, time-limited trials when applying management practices based on lower-level evidence.” Meanwhile, she continues, “invest in larger scale, longer-term management ‘experiments’ when you are certain that the evidence supporting those practices is more robust.”

Learn more about EBMgt:

Reay, T., Berta, W., & Kohn, M. (2009). “What’s the evidence on evidence-based management?” Academy of Management Perspectives, 23(4), 5-18.