ORGANIZATIONAL

BEHAVIOUR
Dr. Naor Cohen
OBHR 317
Winter 2021

#Teachhaskayne

Th e
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e versi
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EVIDENCE-BASED
MANAGEMENT
“Wikipedia is the best thing
ever. Anyone in the world
can write anything they
want about any subject. So
you know you are getting
the best possible
information.”

Michael Scott
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What is EBMgmt?

The use of the best available

evidence from multiple sources to
increase the likelihood of a
favorable outcome.

• Be conscientious, explicit, and

judicious
• Probabilities and likelihoods
• Statistics is about reducing
uncertainties, not making
certainties
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What’s happening in management?

Here’s the gist of it

• It may not be but management • Evidence-based practice makes a

has come very late to evidence- lot of sense
based practice • But it doesn’t seem to happen as
• The concept is not well-known or much as it should
understood by organizations, • It is not well-known in
managers or management management
schools
• So what are the barriers?
• It seems that some management • General misconceptions and myths
practice is dominated by fads and (HIPPO)
fashions and not much into • Research-practice gap
basing decisions on good quality
evidence from multiple sources
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Why should we care about EBMgmt?

Few reasons

• Biases, strong and wrong beliefs

• Poor decisions, failure in organizations
• Upper management is not really
trained in decision making:
• Obsolete knowledge
• Intuition and personal experience
• Swayed by fads and fashions
• Specialist skills
• Mindless mimicry of top performers
• Dogma

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Dumbest Management Fad?!

Open-Plan Offices

The vision:
Removing spatial boundaries in the workplace will spur
employees to interact more, sparking fresh ideas, and
boosting collaboration

What evidence show:

Open office plans have found to reduce conditions
conducive to:
• Collaboration and collective intelligence
• Employee satisfaction
• Focus
• Psychological privacy

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Okay, you got my attention. Where do we go from here?

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Methodological pitfalls
External validity

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Asking helps identifying assumptions. Most daily life
assumptions are harmless, if turned incorrect. This is
not the case in business decisions.
What is the assumed problem or opportunity?
Acquiring various sources (4 in EBMgmt). Whom to
ask (and how many)? What to ask? How to ask? All
important decisions to make
Appraising where these evidence come from (scientific
vs. practitioners)? And what are the potential biases?
There’s always biases. Can they be reduced? How

This is – for most – the daunting part of doing

statistics and understanding the differences between
probability estimate and the truth
Is the evidence generalizable to our organizational
context? Evidence can be valid and reliable but come
from a different sector
Is the evidence generalizable to our organizational
context? Evidence can be valid and reliable but come
from a different sector. What are the ethical issues? Is
the evidence actionable? Did you consider
moderators?
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Example of Evidence based management

Employee engagement (EE)

• Suppose you or your organization

believe that low EE is somehow a
problem in your organization
• And because it is, you should
measure EE and attempt to
increase ‘low’ scores somehow
• How would you (a) approach this
problem and (b) identify a
solution from an evidence-based
practice approach?

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Let’s try Evidence based

• Suppose you or your organization

believe that low EE is somehow a
problem in your organization
• And because it is you should
measure EE and attempt to
increase ‘low’ scores somehow
• How would you (a) approach this
problem and (b) identify a
solution from an evidence-based
practice approach?

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Practitioners’ professional expertise

Element 1

• Identifying the problem

• Have I/we seen EE problems before? What happened?
• Based on our experience, is the level of EE a problem?
• What do I/we believe about causes and consequences of low EE?
• Identifying solution (only if EE is a problem)
• Have I/we seen EE interventions before? What happened?
• What do I/we believe about EE interventions?
• Based on our experience, is the level of EE here a problem? What are costs &
benefits of intervening?
• How relevant and applicable and trustworthy is my/our expertise?

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ONLY PRACTITIONERS KNOW THE ANSWERS
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Organizational Data
Element 2

• Identifying the problem

• What actually is the EE level?
• Are there patterns or trends in EE?
• Do data show how EE is a problem?
• Do data show that low EE is causing problems?
• Identifying solution (only if EE is a problem)
• What attempts to enhance EE are currently in place and are they working?
• What else is happening that might be affecting EE?
• Are there relationships between EE and other data? Employee type? Shift?
Department?
• How relevant and applicable and trustworthy are our organizational data?

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Scientific Literature
Element 3

• Identifying the problem

• What are the average rates of EE in my sector and location – is the level here
‘low’?
• What does systematically reviewed research evidence suggest are the
problems with low EE?
• Identifying solution (only if EE is a problem)
• What does research evidence from systematic reviews suggest are major
causes of low EE?
• What does research evidence from systematic reviews suggest as effective
interventions to increase EE?
• How relevant and applicable and trustworthy are the scientific findings?
THE ANSWERS ARE (sort of) PUBLICALLY AVAILABLE 26
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Stakeholders values and concerns

Element 4

• Identifying the problem

• How do employees feel about and view the EE ‘problem’?
• Do they see negative consequences?
• What do managers think about the problem?
• Do customers or clients or service users have a view?
• Identifying solution (only if EE is a problem)
• How do employees feel about and view the solutions?
• What do managers think about the solutions?
• What alternative explanations and proposed solutions do others have?
• How relevant and applicable and trustworthy are stakeholder concerns
evidence?
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General misconceptions and myths

about EBM
• Evidence can prove things. No. Just probabilities or
indications based on limited information and
situations.
• Evidence tells you the truth about things. No. Truth
is a whole different thing.
• Evidence means quantitative ‘scientific’ evidence.
No. Evidence in general just means information –
like the use of ‘evidence’ in legal settings – anything
might count if it’s valid and relevant.
• Evidence-based practice means practitioners should
not use their professional expertise or gut feel. No.
Expertise /gut is also evidence which can be as valid
as any other and is needed to apply evidence. Gut
feel relevant only for some types of decisions.
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General misconceptions and myths

about EBM
• Doing evidence-based practice means doing what
the research evidence tells you works. No.
Research evidence is just one of four sources of
evidence. Evidence-based practice is about practice
not research. Evidence doesn’t speak for itself or do
anything.
• New exciting single ‘breakthrough’ studies provide
the best evidence. No. It’s about what a body of
research says. Single studies don’t matter.
• Collecting valid and relevant evidence gives you The
Answer to The Problem. No. Evidence rarely gives
you The Answer but helps you make better-informed
decisions and develops understanding.

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General misconceptions and myths

about EBM
• If you don’t have evidence you can’t do anything.
No. You always have evidence. But you practice
explicitly knowing the quality of evidence available.
It’s not about perfection or a completely knowable
world. It’s not an all-or-nothing thing.
• Experts (e.g., consultants and management school
professors) know all about the evidence so you just
need to ask them. Rarely true. Experts are biased,
limited knowledge and have vested interests (as
their expertise is likely related to their power or
other resources). It’s about making our own
judgements and overcome “trust me I’m a doctor”-
type deference.

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Why should managers care?

No job is more vital to our society than that of a manager. It is the

manager who determines whether our social institutions serve us
well or whether they squander our talents and resources.
Mintzberg

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever
that it is not utterly absurd
Bertrand Russell
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MYTH:
E D
ST
Professionals base decisions on

B U
evidence

OBHR 317 EDITION

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