Commentary by Frank Sortino, Mark Kordonsky and Hal Forsey . Pensions & Investments, Feb. 2007

Davies, Howard. Improving the Relevance of Management Research: Evidence-Based Management: Design Science or Both? Business Leadership Review, July 2006.

Evidence-based management – hype or reality? orgtheory.net (blog), September 16, 2006

The Good Doctor. Market Based Management (blog), September 18, 2006

Boris Groysberg, Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School. Email to Pfeffer on August 9, 2006:

“I really enjoyed your latest book, “Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management.” We just made it a core book for an HR custom program. When I read your book, I found that I have several case studies and exercises that show how companies can improve performance through evidence-based management. One is a case study about committee’s stock picking at Lehman Brothers. In 2003, Steve Hash, research director at Lehman Brothers, prepared to initiate the firm’s “Ten Uncommon Values” stock picking process for the year. An investment committee had to pick ten best stocks from about 100 stock ideas presented by the firm’s analysts. Each analyst presented one investment idea. The performance of the stocks selected for the Ten Uncommon Values had historically been strong – an investment strategy to acquire the recommended stocks and hold them for one year would have outperformed the S&P 500 for 39 of the last 54 years. However, during the latest three years, 2000 to 2002, the recommendations had performed poorly, generating an average return of –22.5% versus –11.7% for the S&P 500. Hash pondered several questions: What was the importance of the Ten Uncommon Values for Lehman Brothers and its clients? How much time and effort should the firm put into the process of selecting stocks for the report? How many members should be on the Investment Policy Committee (IPC), and who should be selected? What should the process for selection be? Should analysts whose stocks were selected be compensated for their picks?”  more

Ari Heller, MD, MBA. Emails to Pfeffer on May 5, 2006:

“Evidence Based Management (EBMgmt) can learn from the history and antecedents of Evidence Based Medicine (EBM).

Historically, Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) (which was developed by David Sackett MD) was a natural progression from Clinical Epidemiology.

You and Dr. Sutton may wish to review/browse thru David Sackett’s excellent book entitled “CLINICAL EPIDEMIOLOGY” which includes many of the principles included in his book on Evidence Based Medicine. Hence, the scientific and methodological basis of Evidence-Based Medicine comes from Clinical Epidemiology.

The Clinical Epidemiology book provides a CLINICAL PROCESS for the Clinician as well as provides guidelines on how to critique articles and studies in clinical medicine.

This type of information is currently lacking in the management field…” more

Ari Heller, MD, MBA. Email to Pfeffer and Sutton on May 13, 2006:

“During the past week I further reflected on Evidence Based Management (EBMgmt) and its implications on the following issues and topics:

1. The Practice of Management
2. A Clinical Process in the Practice of Management
3. Management as a Profession
4. Program Evaluation of Managerial Interventions
5. Business/Management Education
6. Research in Management
7. PhD Training in Management
8. Basic Sciences in the Business School
9. Clinical Sciences in the Business School
10. Barriers to Change
11. Possible Solutions
12. EBMgmt movement needs a Strategic Plan …” more

Michael Lovaglia, Chair, Department of Sociology, University of Iowa. Email to Pfeffer and Sutton on July 17, 2006:

“‘Hard Facts…’ is a perfectly timed book. Basing decisions on evidence. What a concept! I’ve long tried to explain why scientific knowledge faces such resistance. The result is:

Lovaglia’s Law: The more important the outcome of a decision, the more people will resist using evidence to make it.”

Measure, test, measure, compare. Thinking & Making (blog), July 3, 2006.

Part I: Everything Stanford Business School Knows It Learned From Doug Melvin. Management by Baseball (blog). May 29, 2006

Jeffrey Pfeffer Testifies to Congress About Evidence-Based Practices [PDF version]. For United States House of Representatives, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, Postal Service, and the District of Columbia, Hearing on the Status of Federal Personnel Reform, Washington, D.C., March 8, 2007

Pfeffer, Jeffrey. The Crisis Facing Business: Succumbing to the Madness of the Crowd. BNET Insight. October 14, 2008

“Smart companies understand that the easiest time to gain on the competition is when that competition is in full retreat. Business leaders can’t control the macro-environment, so they shouldn’t try. Focus on your business, customers, and business model and provide the best value proposition. …
…

Yet many companies tend to toggle from one extreme to the other. … Smart, well-managed companies avoid these manic swings in mood and actions. …”

Pfeffer: Punish the Real Culprits. Wall Street Journal Online. September 18, 2008 [Full-text available to subscribers to WSJ Online]

“With the government backstopping some financial institutions such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG, while failing to save others such as Lehman Brothers and letting Washington Mutual disappear, there is lots of discussion of ‘moral hazard.’

Moral hazard has been a particular concern in the analysis of the Bush administration’s proposed $700 billion (an estimate, of course) “bailout.” Most of the discussion throws the term around much too casually and often draws the wrong conclusions. This is really too bad, because properly applied, moral hazard might teach us a lot about how to prevent similar catastrophes in the future.”

Pfeffer, Jeffrey. Woes? Executive, Blame Thyself. Wall Street Journal Online. September 18, 2008 [Full-text available to subscribers to WSJ Online]

“With so much chaos in the economy, it’s tempting for managers to throw up their hands and blame the world for their woes. But that’s exactly the wrong move.

How do I know this? Just look at where this attitude has gotten airline executives after years of blaming outside forces for their troubles.

To listen to them, you’d think that all the problems in this beleaguered industry came from high fuel bills and a bad air traffic control system. But you’d be wrong. In fact, most airline executives are their own worst enemies. They seem to insist on doing things …”

Ridiculing RCTs & EBM, Laika’s MedLibLog, Feb. 1, 2010

“I think many are probably familiar with the spoof British Medical Journal systematic review of randomized controlled trials of parachute use. While it’s slightly amusing for a short while I’ve always felt uneasy about it as it seems to deliberately mislead about some of the principles of evidence-based practice more generally. And the article has been picked up by critics of EBM as supporting their cause. However, I came across this piece which quite effectively picks apart some of the problems with this sort of spoof.” (Rob B. Briner, Professor of Organizational Psychology, University of London)

“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” From: Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (1999), p. 187

“It sometimes strikes me that we are certainly guilty within management of placing what we see as be expert scholars on pedestals and treating their opinion of the evidence as rather more important than what the evidence may or may not show.” (Rob B. Briner, Professor of Organizational Psychology, University of London)

Bob Sutton’s comments on evidence-based management in his blog: Work Matters

Sutton, Robert I. How should organizations handle failures?  Stanford Engineering – Ask The Expert, October 2006

Swedish suicide rates, WMD & evidence based management. Thinking Managers (blog), November 22, 2005

“First, the erroneous use of information is the root of many failures: second, that false ideas persist far longer than they should – because the facts are much less important to their misusers than the propositions which the factual truth allegedly supports.”