Evidence Based Management

Decisions in businesses and organizations are too often based on fads, fashions and the success stories of famous CEOs. At the same time, traditional models and new cutting-edge solutions often fail to deliver on what they promise. This situation leaves managers, business leaders, consultants and policymakers with a profound challenge: how can we stay away from trends and quick fixes, and instead use valid and reliable evidence to support the organization? In response to this problem, evidence-based management has evolved with the goal of improving the quality of decision-making by using critically evaluated evidence from multiple sources - organizational data, professional expertise, stakeholder values and scientific literature. This book sets out and explains the specific skills needed to gather, understand and use evidence to make better-informed organizational decisions. Evidence-Based Management is a comprehensive guide that provides current and future managers, consultants and organizational leaders with the knowledge and practical skills to improve the quality and outcome of their decision-making. Online resources include case studies, exercises, lecture slides and further reading.

The Oxford Handbook of Evidence-based Management shows how leaders and managers can make effective use of best available evidence in the decisions they make — and what educators and researchers need to do to help them come to the right solution.

NEW 2ND EDITION WILL BE PUBLISHED JUNE 5TH, 2018 Over the past decade, the call for evidence-based management has been on the rise. Managers have become increasingly skeptical of advice that is based soley on anecdotes, otherwise known as the "art of management"; they demand, instead, proof that the management practices espoused by the authors in the field are truly effective. Becoming the Evidence-Based Manager delivers the goods, covering a wide range of critical management skills, such as hiring, inspiring, training, developing, motivating and coaching. Readers are rewarded with a thorough understanding of how to put the science of management to work for themselves and their organizations. An organizational psychologist by training and experience, author Gary Latham brings a unique perspective to the art-versus-science debate as he underscores the critical role that empirical research plays in successfully hiring and managing employees. Latham advocates using the "situational" interview style in the hiring process over the "free-flowing" one, for example, as it's proven more effective in assessing a candidate's skills and aptitude. Written in an accessible, conversational style, Becoming the Evidence-Based Manager draws upon 50 years of management research, and provides front-line managers with key lessons and tips to help them put research to everyday use on the job. From hiring and training to supervising and appraising, managers and leaders will learn proven techniques for achieving high performance from their employees.

Learn what evidence-based management (EB management) is and how it can focus thinking and clarify the issues surrounding a decision. The book provides a straightforward process for asking the right questions, gathering supporting information from various sources, evaluating the information, and applying it to solve management challenges. Numerous real-life examples illustrate how the EB management approach is used in a variety of situations, from inpatient bed planning to operating room scheduling to leadership development. These examples also demonstrate the potential costs and benefits of EB management. Show more Show less.

Covering all commonly used interventions for acute and chronic low back pain conditions, Evidence-Based Management of Low Back Pain consolidates current scientific studies and research evidence into a single, practical resource. Its multidisciplinary approach covers a wide scope of treatments from manual therapies to medical interventions to surgery, organizing interventions from least to most invasive. Editors Simon Dagenais and Scott Haldeman, along with expert contributors from a variety of clinical and academic institutions throughout the world, focus on the best available scientific evidence, summarizing the results from the strongest to the weakest types of studies. No other book makes it so easy to compare the different interventions and treatment approaches, giving you the tools to make better, more informed clinical decisions. A multidisciplinary approach covers treatments from manual therapies to medical interventions to surgery, and many others in between. An interdisciplinary approach enables health care providers to work together. A logical, easy-to-follow organization covers information by intervention type, from least invasive to most invasive. Integration of interventions provides information in a clinically useful way, so it's easier to consider more than one type of treatment or intervention for low back pain, and easier to see which methods should be tried first. 155 illustrations include x-rays, photos, and drawings. Tables and boxes summarize key information. Evidence-based content allows you to make clinical decisions based on the ranking the best available scientific studies from strongest to weakest. Patient history and examination chapters help in assessing the patient's condition and in ruling out serious pathology before making decisions about specific interventions. Experienced editors and contributors are proven authors, researchers, and teachers, and practitioners, well known in the areas of orthopedics, pain management, chiropractic, physical therapy, and behavioral medicine as well as complementary and alternative medicine; the book's contributors include some of the leading clinical and research experts in the field of low back pain. Coverage based on The Spine Journal special issue on low back pain ensures that topics are relevant and up to date. A systematic review of interventions for low back pain includes these categories: patient education, exercise and rehabilitation, medications, manual therapy, physical modalities, complementary and alternative medicine, behavioral modification, injections, minimally invasive procedures, and surgery. Surgical interventions include decompression, fusion, disc arthroplasty, and dynamic stabilization. Additional coverage includes patient education and multidisciplinary rehabilitation.

The best organizations have the best talent. . . Financial incentives drive company performance. . . Firms must change or die. Popular axioms like these drive business decisions every day. Yet too much common management “wisdom” isn’t wise at all—but, instead, flawed knowledge based on “best practices” that are actually poor, incomplete, or outright obsolete. Worse, legions of managers use this dubious knowledge to make decisions that are hazardous to organizational health. Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton show how companies can bolster performance and trump the competition through evidence-based management, an approach to decision-making and action that is driven by hard facts rather than half-truths or hype. This book guides managers in using this approach to dismantle six widely held—but ultimately flawed—management beliefs in core areas including leadership, strategy, change, talent, financial incentives, and work-life balance. The authors show managers how to find and apply the best practices for their companies, rather than blindly copy what seems to have worked elsewhere. This practical and candid book challenges leaders to commit to evidence-based management as a way of organizational life—and shows how to finally turn this common sense into common practice.

Adopting an Evidence-Based Management (EBM) approach, this book provides the best evidence available on a wide range of topics from Industrial and Organizational Psychology to help managers base their decisions on scientific findings. Drawing on principles and methods first developed by Evidence-Based Medicine, EBM aims to promote the use of scientific knowledge in organizational and managerial decision making. Based on this idea, the book seeks to establish a dialogue between researchers and professionals of the Industrial and Organizational Psychology and Management fields, translating scientific knowledge into useful resources that can be used to inform practitioner’s decisions and interventions in topics such as: Creativity in organizations Optimism and hope Engagement at work Life and career planning Entrepreneurship Innovation in organizations Cultural diversity and inclusion in organizations Social networks Ageing at organizational context Work/life balance Positive rule breaking Expatriation Time pressure, Pacing styles and polychronicity

Despite the popularity of organizational change management, the question arises whether its prescriptions and dominant beliefs and practices are based on solid and convergent evidence. Organizational change management entails interventions intended to influence the task-related behavior and associated results of an individual, team, or entire organization. There is a perception that a lot of change initiatives fail and limited understanding about what works and what does not and why. Drawing on the field of psychology and based on primary research, Reconsidering Change Management identifies 18 popular and relevant commonly held assumptions with regard to change management that are then analyzed and compared to the four specific themes laid out in the book (people, leadership, organization, and change process), resulting in their own set of assumptions. Each assumption will have a brief introduction in which its relevance and popularity is explained. By studying the scientific evidence, in particular meta-analytic evidence, the book provides students and academics in the fields of change management, organizational behavior, and business strategy the best available evidence for the acceptance or dropping of certain (change) management assumptions and their accompanying practices. By exploring the topics people, leadership, organization, and process, and the related assumptions, change management is restructured and reframed in a prudent, positive, and practical way.