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“Intriguing article. . .where can I find out more about new database. Are you looking for help developing the summaries? ”
– Kim Saunders MAPW'83

“Sigh.

I graduated from the Heinz School 15 years ago and am presently a partner in a large law firm. I stumbled across a discussion concerning evidence-based management several months ago, which prompted my further investigation. The problems with evidence-based management are several but I'll limit my criticisms to the three most obvious issues.

My first criticism is that we've already been down this road. Every few years, someone trots out a "new" theory that's supposed to revolutionize modern management, e.g., contingency theory, systems theory, TQM, etc., and each “new” theory becomes the focus of countless hours of discussion and analysis in board rooms and memoranda, classrooms and exams. Yet these theories are invariably discarded as businesses and business-schools learn and relearn the obvious, i.e., “bad” managers make “bad” decisions, a circumstance only marginally alleviated by training. Consequently, to the extent management theorists believe that evidence-based management is special, they are reminiscent of Sisyphus, in that they apparently believe the hill will be different this time. Rather than attempt to introduce an entirely new discipline, it might be more prudent for business schools to take advantage of the preexisting infrastructure found in law schools, where the emphasis on rational analysis and the application of fact to theory is paramount, and require students to audit an introductory-level class in contracts or legal principles.

“But wait,” wail the masses, “evidence-based management really is DIFFERENT! It relies on really GOOD facts assembled by really SMART people!” Suffice to say, this is a distinction without a difference and prompts my second criticism. The basic premise fueling evidence-based management, i.e, discarding biases, preconceptions and habits in favor of current, best evidence, will invariably lead to “better” results, ignores the fundamental role of personal differences between and among managers. Some people are risk-takers while others are more conservative in their decision-making. Some people are pushovers while others go to the mat over every single issue. Some people are driven by ideological imperatives and see facts as messy inconveniences to be retrofitted around preconceived goals and objectives. Frankly, I’m skeptical of any theory that purports to “solve” the problem of ineffective and inefficient decision-making by management but refuses to acknowledge that better information will invariably take a backseat to personal choice and individual predilection. I’ve been in enough boardrooms and conferences with corporate officers and directors to state without equivocation that smart people with the same facts often disagree about what the facts mean, much less what response the facts require. Evidence-based management cannot solve this problem.

My third criticism of evidence-based management is that it assumes that information is somehow unavailable to managers, or that managers might make better decisions if they focused more on the information available to them. As already noted, this assumption ignores personal choice and individual predilection. More fundamentally, however, this assumption ignores the fact of bad decision-making notwithstanding the extraordinary amount of information already available to managers, a circumstance perhaps best illustrated by reference to the Madoff scandal and the Bush administration’s dogged insistence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. In regard to the former, consider the example of Fairfield Greenwich Group, a New York feeder fund which was one of the central investors in Madoff’s ponzi scheme. Notwithstanding the fact that it was apparently fairly common knowledge among institutional investment houses that Madoff’s results were unrealistic and untrustworthy, and despite Fairfield’s understanding concerning the requirements of appropriate due diligence, Fairfield invested billions with Madoff, a situation presumed to be the result of the lucrative commissions earned by Fairfield’s principals. In regard to the latter, it is patently obvious that the Bush administration possessed all of the information necessary to avoid a confrontation with Iraq, a circumstance underscored by the repeated assurances of U.N. weapons inspectors that Iraq possessed no WMDs, assurances made prior to former President Bush’s decision to engage. Superior information, it seems, is not necessarily the mother of better outcomes.

In sum, good management isn’t a function of superior information, or at least not directly so. Rather, good management is a function of superior people. Indeed, I don’t think it’s stretching the truth to posit that the most important decisions any manager makes are her hires. Hire dolts with poor interpersonal skills and the result is predictable. Hire narcissists who see the “i” in “team” and the outcome is invariable. Hire folks who are capable and thoughtful, however, and the end-product is much different regardless of the management theory you apply. In the end, no matter what you call it, results are driven by people, and the repeated attempts by management theorists to reduce human individuality and intuition to a hard science simply underscores the fundamental flaw in their approach.
”
– D. Calloway

“ I have often lamented the fascination managers have for popular, ungrounded business books and their near total ignorance of management research, e.g. my post on Misreading Business.

http://mayogenuine.com/blog/misreading-business/

That is one of the reasons I required my MBA students to read and report on at least three articles from refereed journals. After, that is, I explained to them what an academic journal was and why it mattered. Apparently most had made it through college without ever encountering the species.”
– Tony Mayo