WAL_RSCH8310_07_B_EN-DL.m4aHard Facts, Dangerous Half-Tr.docx

WAL_RSCH8310_07_B_EN-DL.m4a
Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Nonsense
- Profiting from Evidence-Based Management
By Jeffrey Pfeffer & Robert I Sutton
Harvard Business School Press, 2006
Too many business adages are built on flimsy information.
When decisions are based on
dubious knowledge, the consequences can be catastrophic. This
book by highly respected
scholars, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton explains how better
evidence can be used in
business to generate superior results. Evidence based
management enables business
leaders to face the hard facts and act on the best evidence.
Introduction
Business decisions are often based on hope or fear, what others
seem to be doing, what
senior leaders have done and believe has worked in the past and
strong ideologies. Hard
facts and strong evidence do not seem to back many decisions.
It is time that companies
and leaders rooted their decisions in solid evidence to ensure
optimal utilization of
resources. The authors relate poor decision practices with a
number of examples. Then

they explain how evidence based management can be used
profitably.
Poor Decision Practices
Poor decision making practices can be seen across
organizations. Take benchmarking.
The approach to benchmarking seems to be fairly casual, with
some rare exceptions.
More often than not, companies tend to copy the most obvious,
visible and frequently
least important practices. The underlying culture or business
philosophy of the company
against which benchmarking is being done is not given enough
importance.
Companies tend to repeat what has worked for them in the past.
By all means, learning
from experience and mastery through practice can be useful. But
this kind of an
approach can backfire when the new situation is different from
the past and the lessons
learnt in the past may have been wrong or incomplete in the
first place.
Managers also tend to be unduly influenced by deeply held
ideologies and beliefs.
Beliefs rooted in ideology or in cultural values are quite sticky.
They resist disconfirming
evidence.
Evidence based management
Evidence based management assumes that using deeper, better
logic and employing
facts rather than assumptions or guesses leads to better

decisions. Such an approach
advocates going by hard facts about what works and what does
not. Even when
companies have little data, there are many things, they can do to
rely more on evidence
2
and logic and less on guesswork, fear, belief or hope. For
example, qualitative data
collected from field trips can be used.
Implementing evidence based management requires a mindset
change. Facts and
evidence are great levelers of hierarchy. Resistance to evidence
based management
comes when it changes power dynamics, replacing formal
authority, reputation and
intuition with data. Another problem is that delivering bad news
does not win us friends.
We like to deliver good news because that is what others want
to hear. Unless we
consciously and systematically understand the psychological
propensity to deliver and
hear good news and actively work against it, implementing
evidence based
management will be tough.
The proliferation of business ideas also has stood in the way of
evidence based
management. There is too much information out there for
anyone to absorb. The
recommendations from different gurus are often disparate and
disjointed and in some

cases inconsistent. So it is important to develop a good
understanding of the various
analytical and logical issues involved and evaluate business
ideas carefully before
accepting them.
The differences between typical practices and evidence based
management are
summarized in the table below:
Current practice Evidence-based management
Treat old ideas as if they are brand-new Treat old ideas like old
ideas
Glorify, celebrate, and apply breakthrough
ideas and studies
Be suspicious of breakthrough ideas
and studies
Celebrate brilliant individuals Celebrate communities of smart
people and collective brilliance, not
lone geniuses
Emphasize only the virtues of the research
methods and the management practices.
Emphasize the virtues, drawbacks
and uncertainties of research and
proposed practices
Use success and failure stories about
companies, teams, and people to uncover
best and worst practices

Use success and failure stories to
illustrate practices supported by
other evidence
Use popular ideologies and theories to
generate and justify management practices.
Ignore or reject all clashing evidence
Take a neutral approach to ideologies
and theories. Base management
practices on the best evidence, not
what is in vogue.
The key to implementing evidence based management is
wisdom. Wisdom is reflected
in the attitude people have towards what they know, not in how
much or how little they
know. The essence of wisdom is knowing what we know and
what we do not know. It
3
means striking a balance between arrogance (assuming we know
more than we do) and
insecurity (believing that we know too little to act). The essence
of this attitude is to act
on the present knowledge while doubting what we know. Wise
people get into action
mode right away but keep learning as they go along.
HR Policies

Many HR policies are faulty. Because they are framed and
implemented without
collecting enough evidence, they do harm rather than good to
the organization. The
authors question the basic approach to HR which many
companies follow.
Work and Life
Although there are aspects of work and personal life that are
best kept apart, the
general idea of separate domains is a dangerous half truth. The
emphasis on incentives
stems directly from the idea that work behaviour must be
motivated differently from
homes where people have different motives like obligations to
parents or children. The
tendency to divide work and life into watertight compartments
has also resulted in the
treatment of the workplace as a zero sum game with a few
winners and many losers and
a focus on hiring superstars rather than helping a large number
of people to perform to
their potential.
Talent Management
The “war for talent” seizes the attention of most organizations.
The idea rests on three
crucial assumptions:
- Individual ability is fixed and variant. There are better and
worse people
- People can be reliably sorted based on their abilities and
competence

- Organizational performance is the sum of the individual
performances. What
matters is what individuals do, not the context or the system in
which they do it.
These assumptions, according to the authors, are wrong. For
example, talent is not that
easy to identify. Even the best predictors don’t do a good job of
selecting the best
people. Identification of talent involves human judgment which
is often subject to
various psychological biases.
Talent is also not fixed, according to the authors. Talent
depends on the motivation/
experience of people and how they are being managed or led.
Talent depends more on
effort and having access to the right information and techniques
than on natural ability.
According to the authors, good systems are more important than
having the right
people. Organizations are complex systems that can only
perform well when the pieces
mesh together well. People’s performance depends on the
resources they have to work
4
with, including the help they get from colleagues and the
infrastructure that supports
their work. It is impossible for even the most talented people to
do competent work in a

flawed system. On the other hand, a well designed system can
enable ordinary but well
trained individuals consistently achieve remarkable performance
levels.
The authors provide four useful guidelines for managing talent:
Performance depends on peer
support and can be negatively affected by health and personal
problems. Do not
make the mistake of spending too much and money, attention on
a few stars.
preferences and efforts
when trying to explain performance and underplay the setting,
culture or system.
People over attribute actions and consequences to individuals
rather than to the
constraints under which they operate. Bad systems do far more
damage than bad
people and a bad system can make even a genius look pretty
ordinary.
Wisdom means knowing
the limits of one’s knowledge, being prepared to ask for help
from colleagues and
willingly share one’s own knowledge to introduce constant
improvements.
about the problems they
have fixed, point out others’ errors so that all can learn, admit
their own errors and

never stop questioning what is done and how to do it better.
The differences between wisdom and absence of wisdom, as
explained by the authors
are summarized in the table below:
Wisdom Antithesis
Acting with knowledge (while doubting
what we know)
Acting without knowledge or without
doubting our knowledge: also inaction
combined with endless analysis or, worse
yet, no effort to learn what to do
Understanding and acknowledging the
limits of our knowledge
Acting like know-it-all, not seeming to
understand, accept, or acknowledge the
limits of our knowledge
Having humility about our knowledge Being arrogant or
insecure about our
knowledge
Asking for help from others Not asking for help
Giving help Not giving help
Being curious – asking questions, listening,
constantly striving to learn new things
from people around you

Lacking curiosity about people, things, and
ideas; answering questions and talking
only to show off, without learning anything
from others.
5
The authors mention that four kinds of people can facilitate
organizational learning.
Profile of people who sustain organizational learning
Noisy complainers Repair problems right away and then let
every relevant person
know about it
Noisy troublemakers Point out mistakes, but do so to facilitate
learning, not to point
fingers
Mindful error-makers Tell managers and peers about their own
mistakes, so that
others can avoid making them too. When others spot their
errors, they communicate that learning
Disruptive questioners Constantly ask why things are done in a
particular way and
whether there is a better way of doing it

Financial Incentives
Most organizations believe incentives can be used:
organization values and its
priorities
According to the authors, far from motivating people, incentives
undermine
performance in many situations. People view pay as a signal of
whether the organization
values them and to figure out whether or not they are being
treated fairly. Status and
fairness both matter to most people. So making mistakes in pay
can demotivate people
and lead to turnover.
Incentive schemes have to be simple to be effective. But simple
schemes can cause
damage when there are multiple interrelated dimensions of
individual performance –
when judgment and wisdom are needed in abundant measure to
improve
organizational performance. Indeed, when incentive schemes are
used for complex
tasks, unintended consequences can result. People may “beat the
system” to achieve
the targets and claim incentives.
As the authors put it, “when the tasks that people do are even
modestly complex, it is

often impossible to think up every possible way that they might
achieve these goals…”
Financial incentives are best applied when there are simple,
clear, agreed upon
measures that make cheating almost impossible or when
optimizing performance on
those measures is the focus, regardless of what it takes for
people to meet the numbers.
Another problem with individual financial incentives is that
they increase inequality in
compensation, often in an unfair manner. It is difficult to
identify who is a high
performer. Moreover, most people perceive themselves as
superior to others along
numerous positive dimensions, believe they are above average,
not recognize their lack
6
of competence, fake credit for their success and blame others
for failures. Differential
incentives may make sense only if performance can be
objectively assessed, measured
along one or just a few dimensions. Moreover, such incentives
make sense only when
interdependence on others is minimal.
It is often wrongly assumed that people want to be
differentiated from their fellow
employees. The fact is many people derive satisfaction from
their social relationships in
the workplace. Differential rewards drive people apart, resulting
in jealousy and
resentment, damaging social ties and diminishing trust.

The authors emphasize that instead of signaling people through
financial incentives, it
may be better to emphasise other benefits from their work such
as being part of a
supportive community and doing work that benefits others.
People should believe in the
company, like its culture and enjoy the work.
Organizations are social entities and people are social beings.
People compare
themselves to others and derive feelings of worth and status
from that comparison. Pay
differences have not only substantive but also symbolic
meaning. A skewed rewards
distribution can create problems.
Strategy is destiny
Many companies are obsessed with strategy. There is nothing
wrong in investing time
in formulating a well thought out strategy. But a fixation on
strategy, is dangerous
because it can become a distraction from other crucial tasks.
Evidence shows a fairly
weak link between strategic planning and company
performance. Instead of focusing so
much time and attention on strategic planning, it may be better
to learn as we go along.
There are two costs that companies must take into account in
thinking about the role of
strategy in their management process. The first cost is the
resources consumed in
planning and the second is the leadership attention that is
devoted to strategy and as a

result the diversion of focus away from fixing operational
problems. What actually
provides competitive success and what is difficult to copy is not
so much knowing what
to do as having the ability to do it. Often success has less to do
with planning and more
with execution.
Companies too easily find fault with the strategy or business
model when things go
wrong. But the actual problem may lie in poor implementation
or not addressing the
basics. Spending a lot of time on customers and the quality of
the work environment is
preferable to drawing up complicated strategic plans, especially
when there are many
uncertainties in the environment and flexibility holds the key.
7
Change Management
Change management has been one of the biggest fads in recent
years. The authors
suggest that leaders should not rush into change initiatives.
They must ask the following
questions before embarking on organizational change.
(a) Is the practice better than what we are doing now?
(b) Is the change really worth the time, disruption and money?

(c) Is it best to make only symbolic changes instead of core
changes?
(d) Is the change initiative good for the leaders but bad for the
company?
(e) Do leaders have enough power to make the change happen?
(f) Are people already overwhelmed by too many change
initiatives?
(g) Will people be able to pull the plug?
(h) Will people be able to learn and update as the change
unfolds?
Besides collecting evidence about the wisdom of some change
initiatives, companies
can limit risks by first running experiments or pilot programs. If
the idea is still promising,
they can refine it before rolling it out to everyone.
Companies tend to frequently overestimate the gains from
implementing business
practices, technologies and strategies, particularly things that
others are doing. This is
partly because they think the grass is greener on the other side.
Sometimes it makes
sense to send the message that the company has adopted a new
business practice or
launched a new initiative but without really changing the way
the company is operating.
That way the perception of change can be created but without
really upsetting the
apple cart.
Perverse incentives can make managers and leaders take
decisions that may be in their
interest but not in the interest of the organization. Recognizing
the trade off between

individual and organizational interests is important.
It is not all that easy to shake up an organization and move it in
a different direction.
Power is needed to implement change. Leaders are shocked to
discover how little
power they have to push changes through an organization.
Before embarking on a
major initiative, leaders should figure out the power dynamics,
identify the key
constituencies, mobilize useful information and track political
shifts.
People may be overwhelmed by too many changes. Human
beings have limited
information processing capacity and their ability to focus and
make choices is limited.
Too many changes can cause people to freeze in their tracks,
making them give up even
before getting started. Alternatively, they may become cynical
and start viewing such
initiatives as the flavour of the month.
8
Before launching a change initiative, managers need to ask
whether there is scope to
modify or take corrective action as things unfold and people
learn from experience. If
the change does not permit mid course correction because it is
irreversible, the risk of
undertaking the change gets higher. A change poses lower risk
if there is an option to

discontinue it at a later date.
While change initiatives should be launched after a lot of
reflection, it is equally
dangerous to start with the assumption that a change initiative
must be implemented
very slowly. If too much time is allowed, people may keep
postponing desirable actions
or may also tend to assume that the initiative is not urgent. And
if it is over
communicated that the process is going to be difficult and time
consuming, people may
take this message too seriously and find it difficult to get
started.
Indeed, organizations can change remarkably fast when the right
conditions are in place.
The authors mention some of them:
a) People are dissatisfied with the status quo.
b) The direction they need to take is clear and they stay focused
on that direction
c) People become confident that it will succeed
d) The company accepts that change is a messy process marked
by episodes of
anxiety and confusion that cannot be avoided.
Hero Worship
Hero worship of leaders is quite common. But the fact is leaders
and managers have far
less influence over organizational performance than most people
think. Leaders operate
under several constraints – existing people, products and

markets. People who occupy
leadership positions tend to be similar in terms of educational
background and out look.
They wind up thinking similarly and making similar decisions
as a result. Consequently,
there is only that much impact they can make because of their
leadership style.
Moreover, poorly performing organizations cannot really select
who they want as the
leader. They have to make do with whoever is available.
To make sense of the onslaught of confusing information
thrown at them, people use
cognitive shortcuts to interpret observations & experiences in
comforting and efficient
ways. Placing excessive faith in leadership is one of these
shortcuts. There is also a
human tendency to generalize from the performance of the unit
to the qualities of the
leaders and then infer that since performance was good, the
leader must be also so.
Of course, leaders also have enormous incentives for
perpetuating the myth that they
are in control. They could hardly be expected to come clean and
admit their limited
powers. For one, a lot is at stake in terms of compensation.
Moreover, who wants to
appear excessively modest in an age where talking confidently
is considered a great
virtue?
9

From the company’s standpoint, it is clearly desirable that
leaders do not wield too
much power. The best groups perform better than the best
individuals because groups
are able to take advantage of the collective wisdom and insights
of multiple individuals.
Leaders make mistakes. But to the extent that they exert
tremendous control over their
organizations there are few checks and balances to reign in the
errors. Moreover when
leaders make decisions, people do not have a sense of
ownership. So others are less
motivated to implement them. Human beings like to be
responsible and be in control
over some aspects of life. When they cede control, they feel
uncomfortable.
Leaders must act as if they are in control and project confidence
even while recognizing
the organizational realities and their own limitations. They must
maintain an attitude of
wisdom and a healthy dose of modesty. Leaders must also know
when to get out of the
way and let others make contributions. Indeed, the best
leadership in some situations is
no leadership at all. When leaders know less about the work
than the people who are
being managed, it may be better to get out of the way. When a
group does creative
work, minimal interference on the part of the leader is
advisable. Leaders often have the
highest impact when they help build systems where the actions
of a few powerful and
highly skilled people became less important. Leadership is all
about architecting

organizational systems, teams and cultures and establishing the
conditions and
preconditions for others to succeed.
One of the major challenges faced by leaders who want to
convince others that they are
in control is the onslaught of conflicting and small details that
need attention. Leaders
must focus on the few crucial things that matter most right now
and relentlessly
communicate about those few things.
Leaders must instill confidence in people and convince them
that the future will be
bright if they act in a cooperative coordinated fashion to
accomplish things. But while
instilling this confidence, leaders must not succumb to their
own hype and start
believing too much in their own omnipotence. Leaders must
minimize power distance.
They should also nurture senior managers who see themselves
as serving rather than
dominating others in the organization.
Leadership cannot be learnt by reading, or by attending classes.
It is a craft best learnt
through experience. Leadership skills are also not that easily
transferable across
companies or industries as widely imagined. Becoming an
effective manager requires
deep knowledge of the industry, organization, people and the
work they do. If and when
leaders move across companies or industries, they must take
time to learn about the
work people do, customers and products before they start
making changes.

The key take away from the book is that leaders must be smart
enough to act as if they
are in charge but wise enough not to let their power go to their
heads. They must
neither be arrogant nor insecure.
10
Conclusion
Evidence based management is too often the exception than the
rule. Pfeffer and
Sutton emphasise that evidence based management is not a list
of techniques that can
be mechanically applied. It is a way of thinking about what the
company knows/does
not know, what is working/not working and what to try next. It
is not a one time magical
fix to problems. The authors provide a few implementation
principles to practice
evidence based management.
– people
should learn even as they
act on what they know.
– this is opposed to smart talk, self
aggrandizement and making
assertions with complete disregard for facts.
– we must use common
sense wherever we can.

We should also check before launching a new initiative or
taking a decision, whether
pertinent evidence exists elsewhere.
hers do. Human
beings often have
inflated views of their own talents and prospects for success.
Leaders who can step
out of their own shoes and see their companies as if they are
outsiders will make
better decisions.
can make people stubborn,
stupid and resistant to
valid evidence. Many leaders fall because they believe that they
cannot achieve
greatness if they admit an error, or express their ignorance
about something.
r senior executives.
The best organizations
are places where everyone has the responsibility to gather and
act on quantitative
and qualitative data and to help everyone else learn what they
know.
els.
Companies can
identify practices based on solid, evidence. They can use vivid
stories, cases,
experiences to grab the attention of people and trigger
organizational action.
When leaders are
wrong and people do not have the power to reverse their

commands, ignoring
orders, delaying action or implementing programs incompletely
may be best for all
involved.
of forgive and
remember. Forgive so that people are willing to talk about and
admit the errors that
are inevitable and remember so that the same mistakes do not
occur repeatedly.
People in organizations must display curiosity and keep
learning new skills, come to
grips with the best logic and evidence and apply what they
know to change their
organizations for the better. Leaders must have the humility to
be students and the
confidence to be teachers. The best leaders know when to
switch between these roles.
2005 Presidential Address
IS THERE SUCH A THING AS “EVIDENCE-
BASED MANAGEMENT”?
DENISE M. ROUSSEAU
Carnegie Mellon University
I explore the promise organization research offers for improved
management practice

and how, at present, it falls short. Using evidence-based
medicine as an exemplar, I
identify ways of closing the prevailing “research-practice
gap”—the failure of or-
ganizations and managers to base practices on best available
evidence. I close with
guidance for researchers, educators, and managers for
translating the principles
governing human behavior and organizational processes into
more effective manage-
ment practice.
Evidence-based management means translat-
ing principles based on best evidence into or-
ganizational practices. Through evidence-based
management, practicing managers develop into
experts who make organizational decisions in-
formed by social science and organizational re-
search—part of the zeitgeist moving profes-
sional decisions away from personal preference
and unsystematic experience toward those
based on the best available scientific evidence
(e.g., Barlow, 2004; DeAngelis, 2005; Lemieux-
Charles & Champagne, 2004; Rousseau, 2005;
Walshe & Rundall, 2001). This links how manag-
ers make decisions to the continually expanding
research base on cause-effect principles under-
lying human behavior and organizational ac-
tions.
Here is what evidence-based management
looks like. Let’s call this example, and true story,
“Making Feedback People-Friendly.” The exec-
utive director of a health care system with
twenty rural clinics notes that their performance
differs tremendously across the array of metrics

used. This variability has nothing to do with
patient mix or employee characteristics. After
interviewing clinic members who complain
about the sheer number of metrics for which
they are accountable (200� indicators sent
monthly, comparing each clinic to the 19 others),
the director recalls a principle from a long-ago
course in psychology: human decision makers
can only process a limited amount of informa-
tion at any one time. With input from clinic staff,
a redesigned feedback system takes shape. The
new system uses three performance catego-
ries— care quality, cost, and employee satisfac-
tion—and provides a summary measure for
each of the three. Over the next year, through
provision of feedback in a more interpretable
form, the health system’s performance improves
across the board, with low-performing units
showing the greatest improvement. In this ex-
ample a principle (human beings can process
only a limited amount of information) is trans-
lated into practice (provide feedback on a small
set of critical performance indicators using
terms people readily understand).
Evidence-based management, as in the exam-
ple above, derives principles from research ev-
idence and translates them into practices that
solve organizational problems. This isn’t always
easy. Principles are credible only where the ev-
idence is clear, and research findings can be
tough for both researchers and practitioners to
interpret. Moreover, practices that capitalize on
a principle’s insights must suit the setting (e.g.,
who is to say that the particular performance

indicators the executive director uses are perti-
nent to all units?). Evidence-based manage-
ment, despite these challenges, promises more
consistent attainment of organizational goals,
including those affecting employees, stockhold-
This article is based on the address I gave at the annual
meeting of the Academy of Management in Honolulu, Ha-
waii. Chuck Bantz, Andy Garman, Paul S. Goodman, Ricky
Griffin, Bob Hinings, Paul Hirsch, Sharon McCarthy, Sara
Rynes, Laurie Weingart, and John Zanardelli contributed
ideas toward its development.
� Academy of Management Review
2006, Vol. 31, No. 2, 256–269.
256
ers, and the public in general. This is the prom-
ise that attracted me to organizational research
at the beginning of my career— but it remains
unfulfilled.
THE GREAT HOPE AND THE GREAT
DISAPPOINTMENT
It is ironic that I came to write this article in
my role as the sixtieth Academy of Management
president. “Management” was a nasty word in
my blue collar childhood, where everyone in the
family was affected by how the company my
father worked for managed its employees. When
the supervisor frequently called my father to ask
him to put in more overtime in an already long

work week, all of us kids got used to covering for
him. If the phone rang when my father was
home, he’d have us answer it. We all knew what
to say if it was the company calling: “Dad’s not
here.” The idea of just telling the supervisor that
he didn’t want to work never occurred to my
father, or anyone else in the family. The threat of
disciplinary action or job loss loomed large, re-
inforced by dinnertime stories about a boss’s
abusive behavior or some inexplicable com-
pany action. From this vantage point, the term
management connotes harsh and arbitrary be-
havior, with undertones of otherness. It is a far
cry from the dictionary definition of manage-
ment as “a judicious use of means to accomplish
an end” (Merriam-Webster, 2005).
I acquired a wholly new perspective on man-
agement and managers when I became a busi-
ness school professor. First, many business stu-
dents, even at the MBA level, have never
experienced what it is like to work for a good
manager. In the first business course I taught, in
organizational behavior, I gave the students two
assignments: (1) write about the worst boss you
ever had, describing what made that person the
worst and how it impacted you, and (2) write
about the best boss you ever had, describing
what made that person the best and how it im-
pacted you.
My MBA students with an average of five
years of full-time work experience had no prob-
lem with assignment 1. For many of them, the
assignment was cathartic, and they frequently
exceeded its assigned page limit in writing vi-

tuperative portrayals of managers variously
presented as self-centered, capricious, or other-
wise lacking in capability or character. Assign-
ment 2 was another matter. Many students had
great difficulty thinking of anyone who quali-
fied as “the best manager.” Over a third couldn’t
think of any boss they could even describe as
good.
To the extent that people manage others the
way they themselves have been managed, I
came to worry about what the future held for
these managers-in-the-making. Nonetheless,
while these business students may never have
had a great boss, they themselves still hoped to
become one. (By the way, I have since aban-
doned this assignment in favor of more self-
reflection on the manager students want to be-
come and ways they can develop themselves to
move closer to that ideal.)
Second, most business students have never
worked for a great company either. (There is the
possibility that only dissatisfied people quit
their jobs to study full time for an MBA, but in
this regard I suspect availability bias.) I never
have had any difficulty getting students to share
their experiences of dysfunctional organization-
al practices. However, when it comes to identi-
fying a more functional way to motivate workers
or restructure firms, they are often at a loss. Still,
in-class discussions and students’ own future
plans suggest that they do hope to join a com-
pany (or to start one) that is better managed
than those they have worked for so far.

In class and out, I have spent a lot of time
helping students learn how to make a business
case, with their future employers in mind, for
creating financially successful firms that are
good for people too. I have come to feel tremen-
dous respect and affection for those students
who have the personal aspiration to be a great
manager in a great company. Out of these per-
sonal and professional experiences, I have nur-
tured my great hope—that, through research
and education, we can promote effective orga-
nizations where managers make well-informed,
less arbitrary, and more reflective decisions.
My great disappointment, however, has been
that research findings don’t appear to have
transferred well to the workplace. Instead of a
scientific understanding of human behavior and
organizations, managers, including those with
MBAs, continue to rely largely on personal ex-
perience, to the exclusion of more systematic
knowledge. Alternatively, managers follow bad
advice from business books or consultants
based on weak evidence. Because Jack Welch or
2006 257Rousseau
McKinsey says it, that doesn’t make it true. (Sev-
eral decades of research on attribution bias in-
dicate that people have a difficult time drawing
unbiased conclusions regarding why they are
successful, often giving more credit to them-
selves than the facts warrant. Management gu-

rus are in no way immune.)
Sadly, there is poor uptake of management
practices of known effectiveness (e.g., goal set-
ting and performance feedback [Locke &
Latham, 1984]). Even in businesses populated by
MBAs from top-ranked universities, there is un-
explained wide variation in managerial prac-
tice patterns (e.g., how [or if] goals are set, se-
lection decisions made, rewards allocated, or
training investments determined) and, worse,
persistent use of practices known to be largely
ineffective (e.g., downsizing [Cascio, Young, &
Morris, 1997; high ratios of executive to rank-
and-file employee compensation [Cowherd &
Levine, 1992]). The result is a research-practice
gap, indicating that the answer to this article’s
title question is no—at least not yet. What it
means to close this gap and how evidence-
based management might become a reality are
the matters I turn to next.
THE “EVIDENCE-BASED” ZEITGEIST
The phrase “evidence-based” is a buzzword in
contemporary public policy, with all the risk of
triteness and superficiality that buzzword status
conveys. Let’s not be misled by its current pop-
ularity. Evidence-based practice has tremen-
dous substance and discipline behind it. We can
observe its impact in two fields highly influ-
enced by legislative decisions: policing and sec-
ondary education. In evidence-based policing,
community police officers are trained to treat
criminal suspects politely, because doing so has
been found to reduce repeat offenses (Sherman,

2002; Tyler, 1990). In evidence-based education,
many secondary schools have restored the prac-
tice of social promotion, where students who
have difficulty passing their courses, even after
several tries, are advanced to the next grade
level. Research indicates that social promotion’s
benefits outweigh its costs, because a high
school diploma increases the likelihood of sub-
sequent employment and lowers the incidence
of drug use, even among students who wouldn’t
otherwise have qualified for that diploma
(Jimerson, Anderson, & Whipple, 2002; National
Association of School Psychologists, 2005).
Evidence-based practice is a paradigm for
making decisions that integrate the best avail-
able research evidence with decision maker ex-
pertise and client/customer preferences to guide
practice toward more desirable results (e.g.,
Sackett, Straus, Richardson, Rosenberg, &
Haynes, 2000). Proponents are skeptical about
experience, wisdom, or personal credentials as
a basis for asserting what works. The question
is “What is the evidence?“—not “Who says so?”
(Sherman, 2002: 221). The answer, as the crimi-
nologist Lawrence W. Sherman indicates, can
be graded from weak to strong, based on rules of
scientific inference, where before-and-after
comparisons are stronger than simultaneous
correlations—randomized, controlled tests
stronger than longitudinal cohort analyses.
Strong evidence trumps weak, irrespective of
how charismatic the evidence’s presenter is.
Sherman sums it up: “We are all entitled to our
own opinions, but not to our own facts” (2002:

223).
Medicine is a success story as the first domain
to institutionalize evidence-based practice. Evi-
dence-based medicine is the integration of indi-
vidual clinical expertise and the best external
evidence. Its origins date back to 1847, when
Ignaz Semmelweis discovered the role that in-
fection played in childbirth fever. Semmelweis
was vilified by physicians of the time for his
assertion that it was doctors themselves who
were infecting women by carrying germs be-
tween dead bodies and patients. Nonetheless,
his work influenced the formulation of germ the-
ory, which gained acceptance with the work of
Lister and Pasteur forty years later (Wikipedia,
2005). Extensive infrastructures promote evi-
dence-based health care (e.g., the U.S. National
Institutes of Health and Institute of Medicine,
the Canadian Health Services Research Foun-
dation, and the Cochrane Collaboration).
Evidence-based-clinical care as a way of life
in health care organizations is of relatively re-
cent vintage, enjoying its greatest growth after
1990. (If you are wondering what physicians did
before, the answer is what managers are doing
now, but without medicine’s added advantages
from common professional training and mal-
practice sanctions.) The attributes of evidenced-
based medicine provide a useful reference point
258 AprilAcademy of Management Review

for exploring what its counterpart in manage-
ment might look like.
By way of example, germ theory is widely
understood by clinical care givers. It has led to
broad application of infection control systems
(gowns, sterile needles, and sterile instruments),
medicines to avoid or cure infections, and sup-
porting practices (handwashing). Its application
has led to radical but important interpretations
of seemingly distant events. Incidence of heart
attack, for example, increases immediately after
having one’s teeth cleaned. Reflecting on this
correlation in light of germ theory led to recog-
nition that teeth cleaning disperses mouth bac-
teria into the heart’s arteries. Certain bacteria in
these arteries create conditions that give rise to
heart attacks. Recognizing this causal link led to
a risk-reducing solution: giving heart patients
antibiotics to take before dental treatments as a
preventive. This application of medical evi-
dence involved cause-and-effect connections—
how dental practice can disperse mouth bacte-
ria into the heart’s arteries. It also required
isolation of variations that affect desired out-
comes, requiring knowledge of the mechanisms
triggering heart attacks (and, in this case,
knowledge that gum disease may itself trigger
heart attacks [see, for instance, Desvarieux et
al., 2005]).
Yet more than scientific insight is needed to
create evidence-based practice. In fact, only
some physicians recommend this preventive ac-
tion for their heart patients. Others may not see
the risk as that great, are unaware of the find-

ing, or merely have forgotten to make this pre-
ventive action part of their standard orders for
cardiac patients. The involvement of other prac-
titioners further complicates matters: dentists
are not necessarily educated to inquire about
heart conditions.
Organizational factors affect whether evi-
dence-based practice occurs. In health care set-
tings certain features increase the likelihood
that an at-risk patient will get the preventive
medication. Social networks and organizational
culture matter. It helps if the patient’s physician
is part of a practice or a hospital where others
recommend such preventive care. Similarly, im-
peding this evidence-based practice is the fact
that dentists are unlikely to be in the same pro-
fessional networks as physicians. In a hospital
where medical leadership promotes evidence-
based medicine, more physicians are likely to
be aware of the finding. Such settings are also
likely to have staff in-services to update physi-
cian knowledge where this practice might be
discussed.
Relatedly, participation in research increases
the salience of the evidence base. It helps if
physicians in the immediate environment have
participated in clinical research and are en-
gaged in one of the several online communities
that review clinical evidence and then create
and disseminate recommendations, which
raises the next point: access to information on
those practices the evidence supports. Physi-
cians have online services that provide ready

access to clinical practice best supported by re-
search, based on the review and recommenda-
tion of health care experts (e.g., Cochrane Col-
laboration). Such services capitalize on the
information explosion and internet connections
to build communities of practice enabling ex-
perts to communicate their knowledge, identify
the best-quality evidence, and disseminate it
broadly to care givers (Jadad, Haynes, Hunt, &
Browman, 2000).
Decision supports can be designed to make it
easier to implement evidence-based practices. A
patient care protocol might be written specify-
ing that each heart patient and all post-op car-
diac cases be advised of the need to premedi-
cate before teeth cleaning, along with a
prescription written for and given to the patient
at discharge. This protocol might be formalized
to the extent that a premedication instruction is
written in each cardiac patient’s discharge or-
ders.
Last, a web of factors—individual (knowl-
edge), organizational (access to knowledgeable
others, support for evidence use), and institu-
tional (dissemination of evidence-based prac-
tice)—promotes, sustains, and institutionalizes
evidence-based medicine. Britain’s national
health system, for example, promotes evidence-
based practice using the Cochrane Collabora-
tion’s recommendations as the standard. Medi-
care in the United States publishes information
on whether hospitals use proven remedies in
patient care (Kolata, 2004).

In sum, features characterizing evidence-
based practice include
• learning about cause-effect connections in
professional practices;
• isolating the variations that measurably af-
fect desired outcomes;
2006 259Rousseau
• creating a culture of evidence-based deci-
sion making and research participation;
• using information-sharing communities to
reduce overuse, underuse, and misuse of
specific practices;
• building decision supports to promote prac-
tices the evidence validates, along with
techniques and artifacts that make the de-
cision easier to execute or perform (e.g.,
checklists, protocols, or standing orders);
and
• having individual, organizational, and insti-
tutional factors promote access to knowl-
edge and its use.
Now let’s consider what such practice might
mean for management and organizations.
WHY EVIDENCE-BASED MANAGEMENT IS
IMPORTANT AND TIMELY

Evidence-based management is not a new
idea. Chester Barnard (1938) promoted the devel-
opment of a natural science of organization to
better understand the unanticipated problems
associated with authority and consent. Since
Barnard’s time, however, we have struggled to
connect science and practice without a vision or
model to do so. Evidence-based management, in
my opinion, provides the needed model to guide
the closing of the research-practice gap. In this
section I address why evidence-based manage-
ment is timely and practical.
Calling Attention to Facts: “Big E Evidence”
and “little e evidence”
An evidence orientation shows that decision
quality is a direct function of available facts,
creating a demand for reliable and valid infor-
mation when making managerial and organiza-
tional decisions. Improving information contin-
ues a trend begun in the quality movement over
thirty years ago, giving systematic attention to
discrete facts, indicative of quality (e.g., ma-
chine performance, customer interactions, em-
ployee attitudes and behavior [Evans & Dean,
2000]). This trend continues in recent develop-
ments regarding open-book management (Case,
1995; Ferrante & Rousseau, 2001) and the use of
organizational fact finding and experimentation
to improve decision quality (Pfeffer & Sutton, in
press).
In all the attention we now give to evidence, it
helps to differentiate what might be called “Big

E Evidence” from “little e evidence.” Big E Evi-
dence refers to generalizable knowledge re-
garding cause-effect connections (e.g., specific
goals promote higher attainment than general
or vague goals) derived from scientific meth-
ods—the focus of this article. Little e evidence is
local or organization specific, as exemplified by
root cause analysis and other fact-based ap-
proaches the total quality movement introduced
for organizational decision making (Deming,
1993; Evans & Dean, 2000). It refers to data sys-
tematically gathered in a particular setting to
inform local decisions. As the saying goes,
“facts are our friends,” when local efforts to ac-
cumulate information relevant to a particular
problem lead to more effective solutions.
Although decision makers who rely on scien-
tific principles are more likely to gather facts
systematically in order to choose an appropriate
course of action (e.g., Sackett et al., 2000), fact
gathering (“evidence”) doesn’t necessarily lead
decision makers to use social science knowl-
edge (“Evidence”) in interpretating these facts.
In my introductory example of the health care
system, the executive director might have con-
cluded that the performance differences across
the twenty clinics were due to something about
the clinics or their managers. It was his knowl-
edge of a basic principle in psychology that
gave him an alternative and, ultimately, more
effective interpretation. However, systematic at-
tention to local facts can prompt managers to
look for principles that account for their obser-
vations. The opening example illustrates how

scientific principles and local facts go together
to solve problems and make decisions.
Opportunity to Better Implement Managerial
Decisions
In highly competitive environments, good ex-
ecution may be as important as the strategic
choices managers make. Implementation is a
strong suit of evidence-based management
through the wealth of research available to
guide effective execution (e.g., goal setting and
feedback [Locke & Latham, 1984]; feedback and
redesign [Goodman, 2001]). Indeed, with greater
orientation toward scientific evidence, health
care management’s guidelines frequently refer-
ence social and organizational research on im-
plementation (e.g., Lemieux-Charles & Cham-
payne, 2004; Lomas, Culyer, McCutcheon,
McAuley, & Law, 2005). The continued wide vari-
ation we observe in how organizations execute
decisions (e.g., in goal clarity, stakeholder par-
ticipation, feedback processes, and allowance
for redesign) is remarkable, given the advanced
knowledge we possess about effective imple-
mentation and what is at stake should imple-
mentation fail.
Better Managers, Better Learning
Given the powerful impact managers’ deci-

sions have on the fate of their firms, managerial
competence is a critical and often scarce re-
source. Improved managerial competence is a
direct outgrowth of a greater focus on evidence-
based management. Managers need real learn-
ing, not fads or false conclusions. When manag-
ers acquire a systematic understanding of the
principles governing organizations and human
behavior, what they learn is valid—that is to
say, it is repeatable over time and generalizable
across situations. It is less likely that what man-
agers learn will be wrong.
Today, the poor information commonly avail-
able to managers regarding the organizational
consequences of their decisions means that ex-
periences are likely to be misinterpreted—
subject to perceptual gaps and misunderstand-
ings. Consider the case of a supervisor who
overuses threats and punishment as behavioral
tools. A punisher who keys on the fact that pun-
ishing suppresses behavior can completely
miss its other consequence—its inability to en-
courage positive behavior. Status differences
and organizational politics make it unlikely that
the punisher will learn the true consequences of
that style, by limiting and distorting feedback.
The reality is that managers tend to work in
settings that make valid learning difficult. This
difficulty is compounded by the widespread up-
take of organizational fads and fashions,
“adopted overenthusiastically, implemented in-
adequately, then discarded prematurely in favor
of the latest trend” (Walshe & Rundall, 2001; 437;
see also Staw & Epstein, 2000). In such settings

managers cannot even learn why their deci-
sions were wrong, let alone what alternatives
would have been right. Evidence-based man-
agement leads to valid learning and continuous
improvement, rather than a checkered career
based on false assumptions.
Organizational legitimacy is another product
of evidence-based management. Where deci-
sions are based on systematic causal knowl-
edge, conditioned by expertise leading to suc-
cessful implementation, firms find it easier to
deliver on promises made to stockholders, em-
ployees, customers, and others (e.g., Goodman &
Rousseau, 2004; Rucci, Kirn, & Quinn, 1998). Le-
gitimacy is a result of making decisions in a
systematic and informed fashion, thus making a
firm’s actions more readily justifiable in the
eyes of stakeholders. Yet, given evidence-based
management’s numerous advantages, why then
is the research-practice gap so large? I next turn
to the array of factors that align to perpetuate
this evidence-deprived status quo.
WHY MANAGERS DON’T PRACTICE
EVIDENCE-BASED MANAGEMENT
The research-practice gap among managers
results from several factors. First and foremost,
managers typically do not know the evidence.
Less than 1 percent of HR managers read the
academic literature regularly (Rynes, Brown, &
Colbert, 2002), and the consultants who advise
them are unlikely to do so either. Despite the
explosion of research on decision making, indi-
vidual and group performance, business strat-

egy, and other domains directly tied to organi-
zational practices, few practicing managers
access this work. (I note, however, that of the
four periodicals the Academy publishes, it is the
empirical Academy of Management Journal to
which company libraries most widely subscribe.
So there is some recognition that this research
exists!)
Evidence-based management can threaten
managers’ personal freedom to run their organi-
zations as they see fit. A similar resistance char-
acterized supervisory responses to scientific
management nearly 100 years ago, when Fred-
erick Taylor’s structured methods for improving
efficiency were discarded because they were
believed to interfere with management’s prerog-
atives in supervising employees. Part of this
pushback stems from the belief that good man-
agement is an art—the “romance of leadership”
school of thought (e.g., Meindl, Erlich, & Duk-
erich, 1985), where a shift to evidence and anal-
ysis connotes loss of creativity and autonomy.
Such concerns are not unique: physicians have
wrestled with similar dilemmas, expressed in
2006 261Rousseau
the aptly titled article “False Dichotomies: EBM,
Clinical Freedom and the Art of Medicine”
(Parker, 2005).
Managerial work itself differs from clinical
work and other fields engaged in evidence-

based practice in important ways. First, mana-
gerial decisions often involve long time lags
and little feedback, as in the case of a recruiter
hiring someone to eventually take over a senior
position in the firm. Years may pass before the
true quality of that decision can be discerned,
and, by then, the recruiter and others involved
are likely to have moved on (Jaques, 1976). Man-
agerial decisions often are influenced by other
stakeholders who impose constraints (Miller,
1992). Obtaining stakeholder support can in-
volve politicking and compromise, altering the
decision made, or even whether it is made at all.
Incentives tied to managerial decisions are sub-
ject to contradictory pressures from senior exec-
utives, stockholders, customers, and employees.
Last, it’s not always obvious that a decision is
being made, given the array of interactions that
compose managerial work (Walshe & Randall,
2001). A manager who declines to train a subor-
dinate, for example, may not realize that partic-
ular act ultimately may lead the employee to
quit.
Evidence-based management can be a tough
sell to many managers, because management,
in contrast to medicine or nursing, is not a pro-
fession. Given the diverse backgrounds and ed-
ucation of managers, there is limited under-
standing of scientific method. With no formally
mandated education or credentials (and even an
MBA is no guarantee), practicing managers
have no body of shared knowledge. Lacking
shared scientific knowledge to add weight to an
evidence-based decision, managers commonly
rely on other bases (e.g., experience, formal

power, incentives, and threats) when making
decisions acceptable to their superiors and con-
stituents.
Firms themselves—particularly those in the
private sector— contribute to the limited value
placed on science-based management practice.
Although pharmaceutical firms advertise their
investment in biotechnology and basic research,
the typical business does not have the advance-
ment of managerial knowledge in its mission.
Historically leading corporations such as
Cadbury, IBM, and General Motors were ac-
tively engaged in research on company selec-
tion and training practices, employee motiva-
tion, and supervisory behavior. Their efforts
contributed substantially to the early manage-
rial practice evidence base. But few organiza-
tions today do their own managerial research or
regularly collaborate with those who do, despite
the considerable benefits from industry-univer-
sity collaborations (Cyert & Goodman, 1997); the
globally experienced time crunch in managerial
work and the press for short-term results have
reduced such collaborations to dispensable
frills. Nonetheless, hospitals participate in clin-
ical research and school systems evaluate pol-
icy interventions.
In contrast to more evidence-oriented do-
mains, such as policing and education, manage-
ment is most often a private sector activity. It is
less influenced by public policy pressures pro-
moting similar practices while creating compar-

ative advantage via distinctiveness. Businesses
are characterized by the belief that the particu-
lars of the organization, its practices, and its
problems are special and unique—a wide-
spread phenomenon termed the uniqueness par-
adox (Martin, Feldman, Hatch, & Sitkin, 1983).
Observed among clinical care givers and law
enforcement practitioners too, the uniqueness
paradox can interfere with transfer of research
findings across settings—unless dispelled by
better education and experience with evidence-
based practice (e.g., Sackett et al., 2000).
Yet, despite all these factors, the most impor-
tant reason evidence-based management is still
a hope and not a reality is not due to managers
themselves or their organizations. Rather, pro-
fessors like me and the programs in which we
teach must accept a large measure of blame. We
typically do not educate managers to know or
use scientific evidence. Research evidence is not
the central focus of study for undergraduate
business students, MBAs, or executives in con-
tinuing education programs (Trank & Rynes,
2003), where case examples and popular con-
cepts from nonresearch-oriented magazines
such as the Harvard Business Review take cen-
ter stage. Consistent with the diminution of re-
search in behavioral course work, business stu-
dents and practicing managers have no ready
access to research. No communities of experts
vet research regarding effective management
practice (in contrast to the collaboratives that
vet health care, criminal justice, and educa-
tional research [e.g., Campbell Collaboration,

2005; Cochrane Collaboration, 2005]). Few MBAs
encounter a peer-reviewed journal during their
student days, let alone later. Consequently, it’s
time to look critically at the role we educators
play in limiting managers’ knowledge and use
of research evidence.
EVIDENCE-BASED MANAGEMENT AND OUR
ROLE AS EDUCATORS
My biggest surprise as the Academy president
turned out to be the most frequent topic of
emails sent to me by Academy members: com-
plaints about our journals from self-identified
teaching-oriented members. A typical email
goes like this: “I want to let you know what a
waste the Academy journals are. There’s noth-
ing in them at all pertinent to my teaching. The
Academy should be for everybody, not just re-
searchers.”
My first response was to feel guilty (why
hadn’t I seen this?). But then I started to think
more deeply about what this message implies. It
says that educators aren’t finding ideas in jour-
nals that cause them to change what they teach.
This might mean that current research is irrele-
vant to what’s being taught if educators focus on
other topics. It could mean that the kind of infor-
mation research articles provide about princi-
ples or practices is insufficient to determine
what settings or circumstances their findings

apply to. Or it could even mean that professors
aren’t updating their course material when re-
search findings differ from what they teach.
These emails prompted me to wonder what
exactly we are teaching. If we are teaching what
research findings support, the content of a class
has to change from time to time, with new evi-
dence or better-specified theory. The concern
that prompted this address stemmed from these
emails: the role we educators play in the re-
search-practice gap.
How Professors Contribute to the Research-
Practice Gap
Management education is itself often not evi-
dence based, something Trank and Rynes im-
plicitly recognize (2003) as the “dumbing down”
of management education. They also persua-
sively demonstrated that, in place of evidence,
behavioral courses in business schools focus on
general skills (e.g., team building, conflict man-
agement) and current case examples. Through
these stimulating, ostensibly relevant activities,
we capture student interest, helping to deflect
the criticism “How is this going to help me get
my first job?” Business schools reinforce this by
relying heavily on student ratings instead of
assessing real learning (Rynes, Trank, Lawson,
& Ilies, 2003).
Stimulating courses and active learning must
be core features of training in evidence-based
management, because these educational fea-

tures are good pedagogy. The manner and con-
tent of our approaches to behavioral courses
perpetuate the research-practice gap.
Weak Research-Education Connection
Pick up any popular management textbook
and you will find that Frederick Herzberg’s work
lives, but not Max Weber’s. Herzberg’s long-
discredited two-factor theory is typically in-
cluded in the motivation section of management
textbooks, despite the fact that it was discred-
ited as an artifact of method bias over thirty
years ago (House & Wigdor, 1967). I asked a
famous author of many best-selling textbooks
why this was so. “Because professors like to
teach Herzberg!” he answered. “Students want
updated business examples but can’t really tell
if the research claims are valid.”
This conversation suggests that professors
are likely to teach what they learned in gradu-
ate school and not necessarily what current re-
search supports. (Since many management pro-
fessors are adjuncts valued for their practical
experience but are from diverse backgrounds,
even educators of comparable professional age
may not share scientific knowledge.) I suspect
that the persistence of Herzberg will continue
until all the professors who learned the two-
factor theory in graduate school (c. 1960 –1970)
retire.
However, business schools may discourage
inclusion of some well-substantiated topics be-
cause they don’t “sound” managerial. Paul

Hirsch, the well-known sociologist, tells the
story that when he flies business class, his seat-
mates ask what he does for a living. When he
identifies himself as a business school profes-
sor, the next customary question is “What do you
teach?” As a sociologist steeped in Weber and
the century of research he spawned, Paul used
to say, “Bureaucracy.” His seatmates frequently
2006 263Rousseau
moved to the opposite wing at that point, until
Paul wised up and found a more appealing re-
sponse: “Management” (personal communica-
tion).
Paul notes that managers still need to under-
stand bureaucratic processes, so he hasn’t
changed what he teaches— only what he calls it.
I do this too: I no longer call socialization, train-
ing, and rules “substitutes for leadership” (Kerr
& Jermier, 1978), having found that the last thing
a would-be manager wants to hear is how he or
she can be replaced. The implications are clear.
We frame, and perhaps even slant, what we
teach to make it more palatable. Can it be we
are on that slippery slope of avoiding teaching
the most current social science findings relevant
to managers and organizations, from downsiz-
ing to ethical decision making, because we fear
our audience won’t like the implications?
Failure to Manage Student Expectations

Student expectations do drive course content,
and current evidence indicates that there is a
strong preference for turnkey, ready-to-use solu-
tions to problems these students will face in
their first jobs (Trank & Rynes, 2003). What ef-
forts do we make to manage these expectations?
Unless students are persuaded to value science-
based principles and their own role in turning
these principles into sound organizational prac-
tice, it will be nigh impossible for faculty to
resist the pressure to teach only today’s solu-
tions.
We might start by asking students who they
think updates more effectively—practitioners
trained in solutions or in principles. Effective
practices in 2006 need not be the same as those
in 2016, let alone 2036, when the majority of
today’s business students will still be working.
If we teach solutions to problems, such as how to
obtain accurate information on a worker’s per-
formance, students will acquire a tool—per-
haps, for example, 360-degree feedback. Yet
they won’t understand the underlying cognitive
processes (whether feedback is task related or
self-focused), social factors (the relationships
between ratees and raters), and organizational
mechanisms (used for developmental purposes
or compensation decisions), which explain how,
when, and why 360-degree feedback might work
(or not). Imagine a doctor who knows to pre-
scribe antibiotics to patients with bronchitis (a
common recommendation in the 1980s before
recognition of antibiotic overuse [Franklin, 2005])
but doesn’t understand the basic physiology

that can lead other therapies to be comparable,
more effective, or have fewer downsides. In the
case of feedback, basic social science research
is quite robust regarding how feedback impacts
behavior (Kinicki & Kreitner, 2003). Such knowl-
edge is likely to generate broader utility and
more durable solutions over time than training
in any particular feedback tool.
Lack of Models for Evidence-Based
Management
Case methods are de rigueur in business
schools, helping to develop students’ analytic
skills and familiarity with conditions they will
face as practicing managers. The cases that I
find most effective are those that have an indi-
vidual manager as a protagonist (as opposed to
those that describe an organization without de-
veloping one or two central personalities). A
central character creates tension and evokes
student identification with the events taking
place. That character is typically a manager,
who can be the change agent responsible for
solving the problem or a catalyst for the dys-
functional behavior on which the cases focuses.
Either way, students have a model—a positive
or negative referent—from which they can learn
how to behave (or not) in the future. As with most
complex behaviors, from parenting to manag-
ing, people learn better when they have compe-
tent models (Bandura, 1971). Nonetheless, in
twenty-five years of using cases in class, I can-
not recall a single time in which a protagonist
reflected on research evidence in the course of

his or her decision making.
No Expectation for Updating Evidence-Based
Knowledge Throughout the Manager’s Career
Upon graduation, few business students rec-
ognize that the knowledge they may have ac-
quired can be surpassed over time by new find-
ings. Although social science knowledge
continues to expand, business school training
does not prepare graduates to tap into it. Neither
students nor managers have clear ideas of how
to update their knowledge as new evidence
emerges.
There are few models of what an “expert”
manager knows that a novice does not (see Hill,
1992, for an exception). In contrast, expert nurses
are known to behave in very different ways from
novices or less-than-expert midcareer nurses
(Benner, 2001). They more rapidly size up a situ-
ation accurately and deal simultaneously with
more co-occurring factors. In the professions, ex-
tensive postgraduate development exists to
deepen expertise to produce a higher quality of
practice. In contrast, business schools often im-
ply that MBAs know all they need to know when
they graduate.
WHAT WE CAN DO TO CLOSE THE
RESEARCH-PRACTICE GAP

There is a lot we can do to close the research-
practice gap, both as individual educators and
through working collectively.
Manage Student Expectations
We can manage student expectations with re-
gard to the role of behavioral course work in the
student’s broader career. I often introduce my-
self to full-time students by telling them that the
easiest teaching I do has always been to exec-
utives, because these experienced managers
come to the program convinced that human be-
havior and group processes are the most critical
things they need to learn. At this point in their
careers, our full-time students can only be nov-
ices whose expertise will grow with time and
active effort on their part to understand the dy-
namics of behavior in organizations. Try asking
students what the difference is between ten
years of experience and one year of experience
repeated ten times. Then let them imagine what
ten years of experience in becoming more expert
on behavior and group processes in organiza-
tions would look like (the types of job, people,
settings, etc.). Let them also imagine this for one
year repeated ten times. Reflecting on these con-
trasting visions of their careers gives students
an opportunity to raise their expectations of
themselves as professional managers.
There are various related means for manag-
ing expectations, including the creation of
learning contracts based on the learner’s antic-
ipated future roles, the behavioral knowledge
and skills these roles will necessitate, and how

that knowledge and skill will be acquired in the
course (Goodman, 2005). It is easier to do this as
part of a larger curriculum framed by antici-
pated future roles—the would-be-manager’s
story (Schank, 2003). Important also is the next
feature: providing models of evidence-based
practice and evidence-based managers.
Provide Models of Evidence-Based Practice
We need to model evidence-based practice in
our teaching and in the curriculum. Psychologi-
cal research on learning offers a useful guide for
course/curriculum practices (e.g., Kersting, 2005).
These include exposing the learner to models of
competent evidence-based managers. I have
been fortunate to encounter such a person. John
Zanardelli is the CEO of Asbury Heights, the
Methodist Home for the Aged, Mt. Lebanon,
Pennsylvania. I first met John in an executive
course on change management at Carnegie
Mellon. He peppered me with questions about
skills, information, and management tactics and
wanted to know the research support behind my
answers. Trained as an epidemiologist, John un-
derstands the scientific method and regularly
looks for scientific corroboration of ideas he
comes across in popular management books
and from self-proclaimed experts. (Not surpris-
ingly, the calls for evidence-based management
largely have come from health care profession-
als and scholars [e.g., DeAngelis, 2005; Kovner,
Elton, & Billings, 2005].) I knew that I was seeing
an unusual manager, to say the least, when
John, faced with the need to redesign his orga-

nization’s compensation practices, went off to
the Carnegie Mellon library to read J. Stacy
Adams’ equity theory! His organization’s vision
statement is built around the concept “Where
Loving Care and Science Come Together.”
Managers such as John Zanardelli provide ex-
emplars of the complex set of proficiencies re-
quired to become a master management practi-
tioner. Using them as examples reinforces the
notion that the typical twenty-something stu-
dent is a novice taking first steps along the path
to becoming an expert (e.g., Benner, 2001; Hill,
1992). Active practice, self-reflection, and feed-
back are core learning principles (Schön, 1983).
Developing student competence through active
practice entails project work supported by ongo-
ing reflection and debriefing regarding what
constitutes valid learning and effective behav-
ior. Similarly, our educational practices,
2006 265Rousseau
courses, and curricula need that same reflection
and evolution to effectively model evidence-
based teaching.
Promote Active Use of Evidence
Students need to know that evidence is avail-
able, and they need to learn how to apply it. This
necessitates a balance between teaching prin-
ciples—that is, cause-effect knowledge—and
practices—that is, solutions to organizational

problems—though the mix is subject to dispute
(Bennis & O’Toole, 2005). In the spirit of making
the course tell a story students can understand
and participate in, a course conveying how a
novice becomes an expert manager, like any
good story, involves a succession of experi-
ences, trials, failures, and successes (Schank,
2003). That story line is marked by the acquisi-
tion of distinctly different kinds of knowledge.
There is declarative knowledge regarding prin-
ciples or cause-effect relationships. Students
can acquire principles in a variety of ways. They
might address the appropriateness of group in-
centives versus individual incentives by locat-
ing evidence in a textbook, in journals, or online.
Informing students of the “evidence” through
lectures and books has its place, but there is
value in identifying and deriving the principles
themselves from the sources that will remain
available to them throughout their careers.
Students can learn a good deal from actively
accessing evidence, using it to solve problems,
reflecting—and trying again. Indeed, one of the
most powerful forms of learning may be deriv-
ing principles from experience and reflection, as
when students review cases and then derive the
principles governing the underlying outcomes
(Thompson, Gentner, & Loewenstein, 2003).
Thompson and her colleagues found that students
learned better when they developed principles
from cases than when they derived solutions, a
finding consistent with basic psychological re-
search on learning (Anderson, Fincham, & Doug-
lass, 1997).

Actually using evidence takes a metaskill—
the ability to turn evidence-based principles
into solutions. A form of procedural knowledge,
a solution-oriented approach to evidence use is
comparable to product design, where end users
and knowledgeable others familiar with the sit-
uation in which the product will be used jointly
participate in specifying its features and func-
tionality.
Perhaps one of the first products of behavioral
research in organizations was the revolving
spindle restaurants use to convey customer or-
ders to the kitchen. William Foote Whyte (1948)
discovered that status differences between
restaurent wait staff (typically female) and the
(male) chef led to conflicts, because chefs dis-
liked taking orders from women. The revolving
order spindle to which waitresses could attach
an order and spin it in the direction of the
kitchen allowed customer orders to be conveyed
impersonally, reducing workplace conflict and
improving communication. Other research-
based products include decision supports such
as checklists to guide a performance review or
action plans to conduct meetings in ways that
build consensus (e.g., Mohrman & Mohrman,
1997), effectively translating the evidence into
guides for action.
Build Collaborations Among Managers,
Researchers, and Educators
As the saying goes, it takes a village to edu-
cate people. Changing how we educate manag-

ers in professional schools necessitates a collec-
tive attitude and behavior shift among educators,
researchers, current managers, and recruiters.
Pfeffer and Sutton’s (in press) book calls attention
to managerial heroes—people who use evidence
to turn troubled companies around and/or to cre-
ate sustained successes. As in the case of any
change in collective attitudes (Gladwell, 2002),
turning evidence-based management from a prac-
tice of a prophetic few into the mainstream re-
quires champions— credible people like Pfeffer
and Sutton’s managerial heroes—to advertise its
value. Networks of individuals, excited by what
evidence-based management makes possible,
need to exist to disseminate it to others.
One such collaborative network might paral-
lel the Cochrane Collaboration in medicine and
the Campbell Collaboration in criminal justice
and education. (Such a community has been ad-
vocated to promote evidenced-based manage-
ment of health care organizations [Kovner et al.,
2005], suggesting that communities of experts
might effectively be built around the manage-
ment of specific kinds of organizations.) Each
represents a worldwide community of experts
created to provide ready access to a particular
body of evidence and the practices it supports.
Community members, practitioners as well as
researchers, collaborate in summarizing state-
of-the-art knowledge on practices known to be

important. Information is presented in sufficient
detail regarding evidence and sources of out-
come variation to reduce underuse, overuse, and
misuse. While these communities are geograph-
ically distributed, they also sponsor face-to-face
meetings to promote community building, com-
mitment, and learning. Their major product is
online access to information, designed for easy
use.
EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICE CAN BE
MISUNDERSTOOD
On a cautionary note, the label evidence-
based practice can be misapplied. It can be used
to characterize superficial practices (another
company’s so-called best practice or the latest
tool consultants are selling). Alternatively, it
can be used as a club (the kind with a nail in it)
to force compliance with a standard that may
not be universally applicable. One downside of
poor implementation of evidence-based medi-
cine is the challenge the British health care sys-
tem has faced owing to the use of the Cochrane
Collaboration’s recommendations to regulate
clinical care decisions, with enforcement of the
recommendations regardless of their suitability
for particular patients (Eysenbach & Kummer-
vold, 2005). Evidence-based practice is not one-
size-fits-all; it’s the best current evidence cou-
pled with informed expert judgment.
OUR OWN ZEITGEIST PROMOTING
EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICE OF
MANAGEMENT

Forty years elapsed between Semmelweis’s
discoveries and the formulation of germ theory.
One hundred years later, even basic infection-
reducing practices such as hand washing still
are not consistently performed in hospitals
(Johns Hopkins Medicine, 2004). Considering the
personal growth and social and organizational
changes evidence-based practice requires, our
own evidence-based management zeitgeist still
has plenty of time to run.
The first challenge is consciousness raising
regarding the rich array of evidence that can
improve effectiveness of managerial decisions.
Educating opinion leaders, including prominent
executives and educators, in the nature and
value of evidence-based approaches builds
champions who can get the word out. Updating
management education with the latest research
must be ongoing, demanding that educators and
textbook writers apprise themselves of new re-
search findings. The onus is on researchers to
make generalizability clearer by providing bet-
ter information in their reports regarding the
context in which their findings were observed.
All parties need to put greater emphasis on
learning how to translate research findings into
solutions. In the case of researchers, too much
information that might affect the translations of
findings to practice remains tacit, in the appar-
ent minutiae research reports omit, known only
to the researcher. Educators need to help stu-
dents acquire the metaskills for designing solu-
tions around the research principles they teach.

Managers must learn how to experiment with
possible evidence-based solutions and to adapt
them to particular settings. We need knowledge-
sharing networks composed of educators, re-
searchers, and manager/practitioners to help
create and disseminate management-oriented
research summaries and practices that best ev-
idence supports.
Building a culture in which managers learn to
learn from evidence is a critical aspect of effec-
tive evidence use (Pfeffer & Sutton, in press).
Developing managerial competence historically
has been viewed as a training issue, underesti-
mating the investment in collective capabilities
that is needed (Mohrman, Gibson, & Mohrman,
2001).
The promises of evidence-based management
are manifold. It affords higher-quality manage-
rial decisions that are better implemented, and
it yields outcomes more in line with organiza-
tional goals. Those who use evidence (E and e)
and learn to use it well have comparative ad-
vantage over their less competent counterparts.
Managers, educators, and researchers can learn
more systematically throughout their careers re-
garding principles that govern human behavior
and organizational actions and the solutions
that enhance contemporary organizational per-
formance and member experience. A focus on
evidence use may also ultimately help to blur
the boundaries between researchers, educators,
and managers, creating a lively community with
many feedback loops where information is sys-

2006 267Rousseau
tematically gathered, evaluated, disseminated,
implemented, reevaluated, and shared.
The promise of evidence-based management
contrasts with the staying power or stickiness of
the status quo. Like the QWERTY keyboard cre-
ated for manual typewriters, but inefficient in
the age of word processing, management-as-
usual survives, despite being out of step with
contemporary needs. Failure to evolve toward
evidence-based management, however, is cost-
lier than mere inefficiency. It deprives organiza-
tions, their members, our students, and the gen-
eral public of greater success and better
managers. Please join with me in working to
make evidence-based management a reality.
REFERENCES
Anderson, J. R., Fincham, J. M., & Douglass, S. 1997. The role
of examples and rules in the acquisition of a cognitive
skill. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning,
Memory, and Cognition, 23: 932–945.
Bandura, A. 1971. Social learning theory. New York: General
Learning Press.
Barlow, D. H. 2004. Psychological treatments. American Psy-
chologist, 59: 869 – 878.
Barnard, C. I. 1938. Functions of the executive. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.

Benner, P. 2001. From novice to expert: Excellence and power
in clinical nursing practice (commemorative ed.). Menlo
Park, CA: Addison-Wesley.
Bennis, W. G., & O’Toole, J. 2004. How business schools lost
their way. Harvard Business Review, 82(3): 96 –104.
Campbell Collaboration. 2005. http://www.campbellcollabo-
ration.org/, accessed December 5.
Cascio, W. F., Young, C. E., & Morris, J. K. 1997. Financial
consequences of employment-change decisions in ma-
jor U.S. corporations. Academy of Management Journal,
40: 1175–1189.
Case, J. 1995. Open-book management: The coming business
revolution. New York: Harper Business.
Cochrane Collaboration. 2005. http://www.cochrane.org/
index0.htm, accessed December 5.
Cowherd, D., & Levine, D. I. 1992. Product quality and pay
equity between lower-level employees and top manage-
ment: An investigation of distributive justice theory. Ad-
ministrative Science Quarterly, 37: 302–320.
Cyert, R. M., & Goodman, P. S. 1997. Creating effective uni-
versity-industry alliances: An organizational learning
perspective. Organizational Dynamics, 25(4): 45–57.
DeAngelis, T. 2005. Shaping evidence-based practice. APA
Monitor, 35(3): 26 –31.
Deming, W. E. 1993. The new economics for industry, govern-
ment, and education. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts

Institute of Technology.
Desvarieux, M., Demmer, R. T., Rundek, T., Boden-Abala, B.,
Jacobs, D. R., Jr., Sacco, R. L., & Papapanou, P. N. 2005.
Periodontal microbiota and carotid intima-media thick-
ness: The oral infections and vascular disease epidemi-
ology study (INVEST). Circulation, 111: 576 –582.
Evans, J. R., & Dean, J. W., Jr. 2000. Total quality: Manage-
ment, organization, and strategy (2nd ed.). Cincinnati:
South-Western Publishing.
Eysenbach, G., & Kummervold, P. E. 2005. Is cybermedicine
killing you? The story of a Cochrane disaster. Journal of
Medical Internet Research, 7(2): article e21.
Ferrante, C. J., & Rousseau, D. M. 2001. Bringing open book
management into the academic line of sight. In C. L.
Cooper & D. M. Rousseau (Eds.), Employee versus owner
issues (Trends in Organizational Behavior Series), vol. 8:
97–116. Chichester, UK: Wiley.
Franklin, D. 2005. Antibiotics aren’t always the answer. New
York Times, August 30: D5.
Frieze, I. H. 1976. Causal attributions and information seek-
ing to explain success and failure. Journal of Research
in Personality, 10: 293–305.
Gladwell, M. 2002. The tipping point: How little things can
make a big difference. New York: Back Bay Books.
Goodman, P. S. 2001. Missing organizational linkages. New-
bury Park, CA: Sage.
Goodman, P. S. 2005. The organizational learning contract.

Working paper, Tepper School of Business, Carnegie
Mellon University, Pittsburgh.
Goodman, P. S., & Rousseau, D. M. 2004. Organizational
change that produces results. Academy of Management
Executive, 18(3): 7–19.
Hill, L. A. 1992. Becoming a manager: How new managers
master the challenges of leadership. Boston: Harvard
Business School Press.
House, R. J., & Wigdor, L. A., 1967. Herzberg’s dual-factor
theory of job satisfaction and motivation. Personnel Psy-
chology, 23: 369 –389.
Jadad, A. R., Haynes, R. B., Hunt, D., & Browman, G. P. 2000.
The internet and evidence-based decision-making: A
needed synergy for efficient knowledge management in
health care. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 162:
362–365.
Jaques, E. 1976. (Reprinted in 1993.) A general theory of bu-
reaucracy. London: Gregg Revivals.
Jimerson, S. R., Anderson, G., & Whipple, A. 2002. Winning
the battle and losing the war: Examining the relation
between grade retention and dropping out of high
school. Psychology in the Schools, 39:441– 457.
Johns Hopkins Medicine. 2004. Expert on hospital infections
talks about hand washing. http://www.hopkinsmedicine.
org/Press_releases/2004/10_28_04.html, October 28.
Kersting, K. 2005. Integrating research into teaching. APA
Monitor, 35(1): 19.

Kerr, S., & Jermier, J. M. 1978. Substitutes for leadership:
Their
meaning and measurement. Organizational Behavior
and Human Performance, 22: 375– 403.
Kinicki, A., & Kreitner, R. 2003. Organizational behavior: Key
concepts, skills and best practices. New York: McGraw-
Hill.
Kolata, G. 2004. Program coaxes hospitals to see treatments
under their noses. New York Times, December 2: A1, C8.
Kovner, A. R., Elton, J. J., & Billings, J. D. 2005. Evidence-
based
management. Frontiers of Health Services Management,
16(4): 3–24.
Lemieux-Charles, L., & Champagne, F. 2004. Using knowl-
edge and evidence in healthcare: Multidisciplinary per-
spectives. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. 1984. Goal setting: A motiva-
tional technique that works. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Pren-
tice-Hall.
Lomas, J., Culyer, T., McCutcheon, C., McAuley, L., & Law, S.
2005. Conceptualizing evidence for health system guid-
ance. Final report to Canadian Health Services Re-
search Foundation, Ottawa, Ontario.
Martin, J., Feldman, M., Hatch, M., & Sitkin, S. B. 1983. The
uniqueness paradox in organizational stories. Adminis-

trative Science Quarterly, 28: 438 – 453.
Meindl, J. R., Erlich, S. B., & Dukerich, J. M. 1985. The
romance
of leadership. Administrative Science Quarterly, 30: 78 –
101.
Miller, G. J. 1992. Managerial dilemmas: The political econ-
omy of hierarchy. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Mohrman, S. A., Gibson, C. B., & Mohrman, A. M. 2001. Doing
research that is useful to practice: A model and empir-
ical exploration. Academy of Management Journal, 44:
357–375.
Mohrman, S. A., & Mohrman, A. M., Jr. 1997. Designing and
leading team-based organizations: A workbook for or-
ganizational self-design. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
National Association of School Psychologists (NASP). 2005.
Position statement on grade retention and social promo-
tion. www.nasponline.org/information/pospaper_
graderetent.html, accessed November 24.
Parker, M. 2005. False dichotomies, EBM, clinical freedom
and the art of medicine. Medical Humanities, 31: 23–30.
Pfeffer, J., & Sutton, R. I. In press. Hard facts, dangerous
half-truths, and total nonsense: Profiting from evidence-
based management. Boston: Harvard Business School
Press.
Rousseau, D. M. 2005. Evidence-based management in
health care. In C. Korunka & P. Hoffmann (Eds.), Change

and quality in human service work: 33– 46. Munich:
Hampp.
Rucci, A. J., Kirn, S. P., & Quinn, R. T. 1998. The employee-
customer-profit chain at Sears. Harvard Business Re-
view, 76(1): 82–97.
Rynes, S. L., Brown, K. G., Colbert, A. E. 2002. Seven common
misconceptions about human resource practices: Re-
search findings versus practitioner beliefs. Academy of
Management Executive, 18(3): 92–103.
Rynes, S. L., Trank, C. Q., Lawson, A. M., & Ilies, R. 2003.
Behavioral coursework in business education: Growing
evidence of a legitimacy crisis. Academy of Manage-
ment Learning & Education, 2: 269 –283.
Sackett, D. L., Straus, S. E., Richardson, W. S., Rosenberg, W.,
& Haynes, R. B. 2000. Evidence-based medicine: How to
practice and teach EBM. New York: Churchill Living-
stone.
Schank, R. C. 2003. Every curriculum tells a story. Unpub-
lished manuscript, Carnegie Mellon University, Pitts-
burgh.
Schön, D. 1983. The reflective practioner: How professionals
think in action. London: Temple Smith.
Sherman, L. W. 2002. Evidence-based policing: Social orga-
nization of information for social control. In E. Waring &
D. Weisburd (Eds.), Crime and social organization: 217–
248. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
Staw, B., & Epstein, L. 2000. What bandwagons bring: Effects
of popular management techniques on corporate perfor-

mance, reputation, and CEO pay. Administrative Sci-
ence Quarterly, 43: 523–556.
Thompson, L., Gentner, D., & Lowenstein, J. 2003. Avoiding
missed opportunities in managerial life: Analogical
training more powerful than individual case training. In
L. L. Thompson (Ed.), The social psychology of organiza-
tional life: 163–173. New York: Psychology Press.
Trank, C. Q., & Rynes, S. L. 2003. Who moved our cheese?
Reclaiming professionalism in business education.
Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2: 189 –
205.
Tyler, T. 1990. Why people obey the law. New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press.
Walshe, K., & Rundall, T. G. 2001. Evidence-based manage-
ment: From theory to practice in health care. Milbank
Quarterly, 79: 429 – 457.
Whyte, W. F. 1948. Human relations in the restaurant indus-
try. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Denise M. Rousseau ([email protected]) is past president of the
Academy of Manage-
ment and H. J. Heinz II Professor of Organizational Behavior
and Public Policy at
Carnegie Mellon University, jointly in the Heinz School of
Public Policy and Manage-
ment and the Tepper School of Business.
2006 269Rousseau

WAL_RSCH8310_07_B_EN-DL.m4aHard Facts, Dangerous Half-Tr.docx

WAL_RSCH8310_07_B_EN-DL.m4aHard Facts, Dangerous Half-Tr.docx

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to WAL_RSCH8310_07_B_EN-DL.m4aHard Facts, Dangerous Half-Tr.docx

Similar to WAL_RSCH8310_07_B_EN-DL.m4aHard Facts, Dangerous Half-Tr.docx (20)

More from celenarouzie

More from celenarouzie (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

WAL_RSCH8310_07_B_EN-DL.m4aHard Facts, Dangerous Half-Tr.docx