This page contains tools suggested by the EBM community, and news stories related to EBM practices.

Tools For EB Practitioners

Briner, Rob B. Using Evidence-Based Practice in HRM: The Evidence-Based Practitioner Quiz  , October, 2007.  A questionnaire devised by Dr. Briner at the Institute for Employment Studies, U.K. that helps practitioners think about how they make decisions and solve people management problems.

“Rob Briner, who already as contributed an interesting article to the site, recently did a very interesting Q & A on evidence-based management applied to Human Resources.” (Jeffrey Pfeffer)

Carey, Mark & Domurad, Frank. Step‐By‐Step Planning Guide: Six Phases Toward Implementing Evidence‐Based Practices for Risk Reduction . The Carey Goup. May 28, 2010.

Hewitt Associates. Talent Guardian™—Using Decision Science to Manage Risk , May 2008

“Purpose: To understand the retention risk of employees and the primary drivers of that risk.
How It Works: A proprietary predictive model combines data about your employees, your company, local market information such as hiring trends andeconomic conditions, and Hewitt’s multi-million-employee database of employee behavior. The model assigns a Retention Risk Score to each employee, which indicates the likelihood that the employee will leave your company in the next 12 months…”

Hewitt Associates. Human Capital Foresight™ Framework and Empirical Foundations , 2005

News Stories

Arenson, Karen W. What Organizations Don’t Want to Know Can Hurt. New York Times, Aug. 22, 2006

Boudette, Neal E., Shirouzu, Norihiko, and Power, Stephen. GM-Renault-Nissan Wouldn’t Be Easy, Past Auto Pacts Show. Wall Street Journal, July 3, 2006 [full-text available to subscribers to ABI/INFORM database]

Discredited pathologist admits he was ‘profoundly ignorant’. CBC News, January 28, 2008

“The above link is to a news story on a public inquiry into the work of an Ontario pathologist. This reads like a footnote to what is described in Hard Facts… as the attitude of wisdom, or “knowing what you know, and knowing what you don’t know.” Considering that we just read Chapters 1 & 2 in class, I think it’s very likely to come up in class discussion over the next few days.

Reading into the story, including a more elaborated account in the Globe and Mail, there is much to consider, including issues of introspection, the interpretive element of forensics, the problem of judging yesterday’s reasoning from the vantage point of today’s knowledge (aka hindsight bias), and the contribution of organizational systems to error propagation and detection. In short there is much in this for readers of “Hard Facts…” to mull over, on many levels.” (James O’Brien)

Dubner, Stephen J. & Steven D. Levitt. Selling Soap. New York Times, September 24, 2006

Ewers, Justin. Cisco’s Connections: The tech giant has mastered the art of acquisitions. USNews.com. June 26, 2006

Fox, Justin. CEO Scorecard: Are today’s CEOs batting a thousand? ; Suggestions for further reading. Fortune, October 20, 2006

Helft, Miguel. The Human Hands Behind the Google Money Machine, New York Times, June 2, 2008

“It is a great example of EBM in action, very similar to what Yahoo has done.” (Jeff Pfeffer)

Hibbard, Justin. How Yahoo! Gave Itself A Face-Lift: Its redesigned home page is based on data from users’ clicks, not its hunches. Business Week, October 9, 2006 [full-text available to subscribers to BusinessWeek Online]

Lyons, John. Siting a Call Center? Check Out the Mall First. Wall Street Journal, July 3, 2006 [full-text available to subscribers to ABI/INFORM database]

Nielsen’s ‘People Meters’ Go Top 10; Atlanta Debut Is Milestone For Device That’s Redefining Local TV Audiences’ Image.  Wall Street Journal, June 30, 2006 [full-text available to subscribers to ABI/INFORM database]

Pfeffer, Jeffrey. Lay off the layoffs: our overreliance on downsizing is killing workers, the economy—and even the bottom line. Newsweek, February 15, 2010

… Layoffs are mostly bad for companies, harmful for the economy, and devastating for employees. This is not news, or should not be. There is substantial research literature in fields from epidemiology to organizational behavior documenting these effects. The damage from overzealous downsizing will linger even as the economy recovers—and as it does, perhaps managers will learn from their mistakes.

So where is your evidence?  The Sunday TImes, March 21, 2010

Southwest closer to assigned seating. USA Today, June 21, 2006

Testing Long-Held Assumptions. Strategy Central [blog]. June 21, 2006

Thurm, Scott. Now, It’s Business By Data, but Numbers Still Can’t Tell Future. Wall Street Journal, July 23, 2003, P. B1