1. 3. Evidence-based management:
What is stopping us?

3. WHAT’S STOPING US? What is stopping us? The quick fix problem
The management fad (fashion) problem
Why don’t academics and researchers like EBMgt?
Why don’t managers and practitioners like EBMgt?

4. WHAT’S STOPING US?
1. The Quick Fix Problem

5. QUICK FIXES What is a quick fix? A ‘solution’ which
Focuses on style and presentation, not content
Is always slower than we hoped
Usually doesn’t work
Is followed by another quick fix

13. So who needs or wants academic research?
QUICK FIXES
So why do we do quick fixes?
Because quick fixes
Can be career-enhancing for managers
Speed is often valued over accuracy
Do we crave quick and easy solutions?
So who needs or wants academic research?

14. WHAT’S STOPING US?
2. The Management Fad Problem

15. Group think: management fads
The nearly-forgotten fads:
Scientific Management/Taylorism
Business Process Reengineering
Management by results
Excellence
Total Quality Management
Learning Organizations
Knowledge Management

17. Group think: management fads
The fads that haven’t been forgotten (yet):
Talent management
Management development
Executive coaching
Emotional intelligence
Employee engagement
Knowledge management
Myers Briggs Type Indicator
Belbin Team Roles

23. So who needs or wants academic research?
So why do we do management fads?
Promise to deliver a lot and fast
Appear simple
New and shiny
Will make everything alright and help contain anxieties around intractable problems
Help user feel effective and cutting edge
Bits of some fads may work in some contexts
So who needs or wants academic research?
*Evidence-based management not a fad!

25. WHAT’S STOPING US?
3. Why don’t academics like EBMgt?

26. Why don’t academics like EBMgt?
Ambivalence about the value and applicability of management research
Few incentives to get involved
Primary research (collecting new data) valued more highly than secondary research (reviewing existing data)
EBMgt not academics‘responsibility – this is about practice not research
Some concern that systematic reviews will expose the limited nature of management research
Some academics are like ‘gurus’ and feel that EBMgt might show their claims to be untrue

27. WHAT’S STOPING US?
4. Why don’t managers like EBMgt?

28. Why don’t managers like EBMgt?
Undermines formal authority
They feel it constrains freedom to make managerial decisions
Speed valued and rewarded more than accuracy
Feel they cannot use their own experience and judgment (not true)
Managers not necessarily rewarded for doing what works (organizations rarely evaluate)

29. Why don’t managers like EBMgt?
Huge (peer) pressure to adopt fads

30. Huge (peer) pressure to adopt fads
“And there we see the power of any big managerial idea (or fad). It may be smart, like quality, or stupid, like conglomeration. Either way, if everybody's doing it, the pressure to do it too is immense. If it turns out to be smart, great. If it turns out to be stupid, well, you were in good company and most likely ended up no worse off than your competitors. Your company's board consists mostly of CEOs who were probably doing it at their companies. How mad can they get?

31. Huge (peer) pressure to adopt fads
The true value of conventional management wisdom is not that it's wise or dumb, but that it's conventional. It makes one of the hardest jobs in the world, managing an organization, a little easier. By following it, managers everywhere see a way to drag their sorry behinds through another quarter without getting fired. And isn't that, really, what it's all about?”
(Colvin, 2004, Fortune)

32. What is stopping us?
SO WHAT’S STOPPING US?
We are stopping us!