Abstract
Evidence-based management (EBMgt) is a relatively recent approach to management, developed by Denise Rousseau in a series of articles and in a book that she co-authored with Eric Barends (Barends & Rousseau 2018). It is based on the idea that good-quality management decisions require both critical thinking and use of the best available evidence. In this paper we want to contribute to the scholarship on evidence-based management by showing how its central concept – evidence – can and should be defined more strictly. Barends and Rousseau define evidence as a two-place relation between information and a claim that is at stake. Starting from insights from the methodology of the social sciences we argue that evidence is a three-place relation between a method, information and a claim. We offer a guiding principle for adequately characterising what counts as evidence (the inclusion of a procedural component which describes how the information should be collected and reported) and apply it to Barends and Rousseau’s concepts of (i) evidence from practitioners, (ii) evidence from the organization and (iii) evidence from stakeholders. We think that by treating evidence as a three-place relation we can develop an improved account (which we call EBMgt+) of what evidence-based management can and should be.
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Notes
While Eric Barends and Denise M. Rousseau are listed as the authors, four other scholars contributed to the book as well (Rob Briner, Barbara Janssen, Martin Walker and Alessandra Capezio). Where we write about ‘the authors’ of the book, that may refer to these contributors too (depending on the chapter of the book we quote or paraphrase).
The main issue is not about sampling methods but about good versus bad ways to search for scientific studies in databases.
We implicitly assume that the other quality conditions hinted at in the fourth section are satisfied as well.
To repeat, we implicitly assume that the other quality conditions hinted at in the fourth section are satisfied as well.
The concept of ‘causal model’ is not rigorously defined. Barends and Rousseau describe it both as “a short narrative that explains why or when the problem occurs (= cause), and how this leads to a particular outcome (= effect)” (2018, p. 29) and as “a graphic representation of the logical connections between inputs (resources, antecedents), activities and processes (what is done to inputs), outputs and outcomes (immediate results and longer-term consequences)” (2018, p. 195).
Sampling (and a fortiori probability sampling) is not required if the relevant information can be acquired exhaustively (for instance because your company only has few employees or because performance statistics are already available for all employees in the company).
One more time, we implicitly assume that the other quality conditions hinted at in the fourth section are satisfied as well. We also implicitly focus on cases where sampling is needed (because the relevant community of stakeholders cannot be investigated entirely).
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank the audience at the OLOFOS seminar (Louvain-la-Neuve), the PSF2022 conference (Leusden) and the SPSP2022 conference (Gent) for their comments on previous versions of this paper. We also thank both reviewers for insisting on the elaboration of the practical consequences in management contexts of our views which are inspired by insights in the philosophy and methodology the social sciences.
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Weber, E., Wyverkens, A. & Leuridan, B. Rethinking Evidence-Based Management. Philosophy of Management 23, 59–84 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40926-023-00236-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40926-023-00236-5