Evidence-based management is a movement to improve outcomes by explicitly using the current, best evidence about what really works: Information that shows which factors really help an organization achieve its objectives, whether it's discovered through formal research, data mining, or practical experience.
Who is joining the evidence-based movement?
business management Two Stanford profs, Jeff Pfeffer and Bob Sutton, are advocates: See “Forget Going With Your Gut” and their 2006 book, “Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management.” Pfeffer & Sutton also sponsor evidence-basedmanagement.com. In 2006 I created the evidence-based management page on Wikipedia, and others have contributed to it since. Conferences are being organized by groups such as the Evidence-based Management Collaborative. (Also see “Is There Such a Thing as Evidence-Based Management?” by Denise Rousseau.) And of course there's this blog, EvidenceSoup.com. Other advocates include Simon Moss and Ronald Francis, who've written The Science of Management: Fighting Fads and Fallacies with Evidence-Based Practice.
health care Evidence-based medicine has gotten lots of attention. See “Medical Guesswork: The Health Industry Knows Little About Which Common Treatments Really Work.” The journal Implementation Science and the Center for Health Design are finding ways to boost the use of research findings in clinical practice and building design. There's a blog on Evidence-Based Nursing. Also see “The Gold Standard: The Challenge of Evidence-Based Medicine” (Timmermans, 2003), and the journal Evidence-Based Dentistry.
government & public policy See “A Paradigm Shift for Managers and Researchers: Evidence-based Management” from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Also “What Works? Evidence-Based Policy and Practice in Public Services” by Davies et al. (2000) and “Evidence-Based Crime Prevention” by Sherman, Farrington, et al.
Evidence-based practices are becoming mainstream, as explained by none other than Joanie Caucus in Doonesbury -- here's an excerpt from the 30-Jan-2009 cartoon:
Other groups joining the evidence-based movement include:
education For example, see Effective School Interventions: Evidence-Based Strategies for Improving Student Outcomes (2nd Ed.) by Natalie Rathvon. And Teaching Content to All: Evidence-Based Inclusive Practices in Middle and Secondary Schools by Lenz, Deshler, and Kissam.
libraries See the Journal of Evidence Based Library and Information Practice.
software design See Evidence-Based Software Engineering, and also “Evidence-Based Software Engineering for Practitioners” by Kitchenham et al., IEEE Software (Jan-Feb 2005).
What is evidence? It's actually pretty basic. Evidence is information we use to make up our minds: Things that help us draw a conclusion, or help prove or disprove something. This includes data, statistics, research findings, expert knowledge, observations, facts, and anecdotes.
Are there guidelines for using evidence? In law, they have rules specifying what's acceptable. (Think about Perry Mason saying “Objection! That's hearsay.”) It's less clearcut for the rest of us, so we need better tools to access evidence, and better guidance on how to interpret it.
