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The purpose of this paper is to examine whether healthcare leaders use evidence-based management (EBMgt) when facing major decisions and what types of evidence healthcare administrators consult during their decision-making. This study also intends to identify any relationship that might exist among adoption of EBMgt in healthcare management, attitudes towards EBMgt, demographic characteristics and organizational characteristics.

A cross-sectional study was conducted among US healthcare leaders. Spearman’s correlation and logistic regression were performed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 23.0.

One hundred and fifty-four healthcare leaders completed the survey. The study results indicated that 90 per cent of the participants self-reported having used an EBMgt approach for decision-making. Professional experiences (87 per cent), organizational data (84 per cent) and stakeholders’ values (63 per cent) were the top three types of evidence consulted daily and weekly for decision-making. Case study (75 per cent) and scientific research findings (75 per cent) were the top two types of evidence consulted monthly or less than once a month. An exploratory, stepwise logistic regression model correctly classified 75.3 per cent of all observations for a dichotomous “use of EBMgt” response variable using three independent variables: attitude towards EBMgt, number of employees in the organization and the job position. Spearman’s correlation indicated statistically significant relationships between healthcare leaders’ use of EBMgt and healthcare organization bed size (r_s = 0.217, n = 152, p < 0.01), attitude towards EBMgt (r_s = 0.517, n = 152, p < 0.01), and the number of organization employees (r_s = 0.195, n = 152, p = 0.016).

This study generated new research findings on the practice of EBMgt in US healthcare administration decision-making.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic highlighted the necessity of practicing Evidence-based Management (EBMgt) as an approach to decision-making in hospital settings. The literature, however, provides limited insight into the process of EBMgt and its contextual nuances. Such insight is critical for better leveraging EBMgt in practice. Therefore, the authors' aim was to integrate the literature on the process of EBMgt in hospital settings, identify the gaps in knowledge and delineate areas for future research.

The authors conducted a systematic scoping review using an innovative methodology that involved two systematic searches. First using EBMgt terminology and second using terminology associated with the EBMgt concept, which the authors derived from the first search.

The authors identified 218 relevant articles, which using content analysis, they mapped onto the grounded model of the EBMgt process; a novel model of the EBMgt process developed by Sahakian and colleagues. The authors found that the English language literature provides limited insight into the role of managers' perceptions and motives in EBMgt, the practice of EBMgt in Global South countries, and the outcomes of EBMgt. Overall, this study’s findings indicated that aspects of the decision-maker, context and outcomes have been neglected in EBMgt.

The authors contributed to the EBMgt literature by identifying these gaps and proposing future research areas and to the systematic review literature by developing a novel scoping review method.

This manuscript discusses the main findings gathered through a systematic literature review aimed at crystallizing the state of art about evidence-based management (EBMgt) in healthcare. The purpose of this paper is to narrow the main gaps in current understanding about the linkage between sources of evidence, categories of analysis and kinds of managerial decisions/management practices that different groups of decision-makers put in place. In fact, although EBMgt in healthcare has emerging as a fashionable research topic, little is still known about its actual implementation.

Using the Scopus database as main source of evidence, the authors carried out a systematic literature review on EBMgt in healthcare. Inclusion and exclusion criteria have been crystallized and applied. Only empirical journal articles and past reviews have been included to consider only well-mature and robust studies. A theoretical framework based on a “process” perspective has been designed on these building blocks: inputs (sources of evidence), processes/tools (analyses on the sources of evidence), outcomes (the kind of the decision) and target users (decision-makers).

Applying inclusion/exclusion criteria, 30 past studies were selected. Of them, ten studies were past literature reviews conducted between 2009 and 2014. Their main focus was discussing the previous definitions for EBMgt in healthcare, the main sources of evidence and their acceptance in hospitals. The remaining studies (n=20, 67 percent) were empirical; among them, the largest part (n=14, 70 percent) was informed by quantitative methodologies. The sources of evidence for EBMgt are: published studies, real world evidence and experts’ opinions. Evidence is analyzed through: literature reviews, data analysis of empirical studies, workshops with experts. Main kinds of decisions are: performance assessment of organization units, staff performance assessment, change management, organizational knowledge transfer and strategic planning.

This study offers original insights on EBMgt in healthcare by adding to what we know from previous studies a “process” perspective that connects sources of evidence, types of analysis, kinds of decisions and groups of decision-makers. The main findings are useful for academia as they consolidate what we know about EBMgt in healthcare and pave avenues for further research to consolidate this emerging discipline. They are also useful for practitioners, as hospital managers, who might be interested to design and implement EBMgt initiatives to improve hospital performance.

Hospital manager decisions can have a significant impact on service effectiveness and hospital success, so using an evidence-based approach can improve hospital management. The purpose of this paper is to identify evidence-based management (EBMgt) components and challenges. Consequently, the authors provide an improving evidence-based decision-making framework.

A total of 45 semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2016. The authors also established three focus group discussions with health service managers. Data analysis followed deductive qualitative analysis guidelines.

Four basic themes emerged from the interviews, including EBMgt evidence sources (including sub-themes: scientific and research evidence, facts and information, political-social development plans, managers’ professional expertise and ethical-moral evidence); predictors (sub-themes: stakeholder values and expectations, functional behavior, knowledge, key competencies and skill, evidence sources, evidence levels, uses and benefits and government programs); EBMgt barriers (sub-themes: managers’ personal characteristics, decision-making environment, training and research system and organizational issues); and evidence-based hospital management processes (sub-themes: asking, acquiring, appraising, aggregating, applying and assessing).

Findings suggest that most participants have positive EBMgt attitudes. A full evidence-based hospital manager is a person who uses all evidence sources in a six-step decision-making process. EBMgt frameworks are a good tool to manage healthcare organizations. The authors found factors affecting hospital EBMgt and identified six evidence sources that healthcare managers can use in evidence-based decision-making processes.

The debate on evidence-based management (EBMgt) has reached an impasse. The persistence of meaningful critiques highlights challenges embedded in the current frameworks. The field needs to consider new conceptual paths that appreciate these critiques, but move beyond them. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This paper unpacks the concept of finding the “best available evidence,” which remains a central notion across definitions of EBMgt. For each element, it considers relevant theory and offers recommendations, concluding with a discussion of “bestness” as interpreted across three key dynamics – rank, fit, and variety.

The paper reinforces that EBMgt is a social technology, and draws on cybernetic theory to argue that the “best” evidence is produced not by rank or fit, but by variety. Through variety, EBMgt more readily captures the contextual, political, and relational aspects embedded in management decision making.

While systematic reviews and empirical barriers remain important, more rigorous research evidence and larger catalogues of contingency factors are themselves insufficient to solve underlying sociopolitical concerns. Likewise, current critiques could benefit from theoretical bridges that not only reinforce learning and sensemaking in real organizations, but also build on the spirit of the project and progress made towards better managerial decision making.

The distinctive contribution of this paper is to offer a new lens on EBMgt drawing from cybernetic theory and science and technology studies. By proposing the theoretical frame of variety, it offers potential to resolve the impasse between those for and against EBMgt.

The purpose of this paper is to address the research-practice gap in management and advocate the need for an independent organization, called the evidence-based management (EBMgt) collaboration to facilitate generation and dissemination of knowledge that is rigorous, relevant, and actionable.

The authors use a theory-building approach to collaboration. They identify existing challenges in the research-practice gap literature and argue that EBMgt offers the most viable alternative to narrow this gap. They offer a theory of collaboration with supporting propositions that engages the generators, disseminators, and users of management knowledge in an ongoing sustainable collaboration toward EBMgt.

The authors envision evidence at the center of the EBMgt collaboration. They offer a process model of EBMgt incorporating a collaboration that ensures the fusion of rigor, relevance, and actionability of management knowledge toward the production of strong evidence that is of value to a decision maker. They suggest that the collaboration generate evidence in the form of a systematic review (SR) using a standard template and make it available online to management decision makers around the world in real time. They outline the parameters of the SR and offer details on the design of the Template.

The theory of collaboration brings together various competing ideas and recommendations made over the past few decades to close the research-practice gap in management. The theory can be used as a guideline to establish and maintain the operation of an EBMgt collaboration.

The authors offer details on the format and content of a standardized SR along with a template to execute it. They believe it would appeal to a practicing manager to know the state-of-the-art knowledge that applies to a decision that he or she is about to make in real time.

The work provides a theoretical platform for the idea of EBMgt collaboration that was not available before. The authors add value to the research-practice gap literature by addressing critical concerns including the identification of relevant research questions, evaluating and grading evidence, fostering communication between researchers and practitioners, and translating research to practicing managers. The integration of research and organizational knowledge in the form of an SR that provides decision support to a practicing manager is of significant value to the profession. The conceptualization of the collaboration, not as a research method but as a separate social system that links key management knowledge stakeholders together adds originality to collaboration research.

This conceptual paper aims to propose the evidence-based benchmarking model that bridges standard benchmarking practices with evidence-based management (EBMgt) principles and lessens tensions between two opposite views of benchmarking as a useful management tool vs a management hype and fashion.

This conceptual paper is based on the critical reasoning, analysis and integration of so far largely separated research fields of benchmarking and EBMgt. The author employs a method of conceptual model building to identify connections between standard benchmarking model and EBMgt practices and to explain how a sequence of benchmarking events supplemented by EBMgt principles might lead to more reliable managerial decision-making.

The author argues that although there are no common benchmarking procedures, it is possible to identify a standard benchmarking model that resonates in most contemporary benchmarking procedures and consists of four main phases: plan, do, check and act (PDCA). The author integrated this standard model with EBMgt practices of searching for evidence in four sources of information and a six-step critical thinking process to put forward the model of evidence-based benchmarking.

The proposed model is a novel, comprehensive framework that puts together so far incompatible practices of benchmarking and EBMgt. The model clears up existing conceptual confusions around “casual” benchmarking and advances contemporary understanding of benchmarking practices. The model of evidence-based benchmarking might act as a practical, heuristic tool improving the quality of the managerial decisions and thus positively influencing the bottom line of business performance.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and assess barriers and opportunities for evidence-based management (EBMgt) and decision-making in healthcare systems of the small island developing states (SIDSs) of English-speaking Caribbean.

The study utilized grounded theory to collect and analyze data on experiences and perceptions of 20 senior managers/leaders from seven Ministries of health in the region. It used semi-structured, in-depth interviews comprising open-ended questions. Data analysis comprised open, focused and theoretical coding.

EBMgt and decision-making is not a prominent approach taken by top officials of health systems because of internal and external barriers to its use. Indeed the absence of a culture of decision-making based on evidence pervades the public services of Caribbean island states. Notwithstanding, there are opportunities for meaningful application of this management/leadership strategy.

To the author’s knowledge, this is the first assessment of the application of EBMgt to health systems of SIDSs of the Caribbean. This paper is concerned with the approach to decision-making in health systems across island states and lends support to the use of evidence in decision-making and policy development. It provides useful direction for policy makers, and senior managers/leaders of these systems.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Advocates the need for an independent organization, called the evidence-based management (EBMgt) collaboration, to facilitate generation and dissemination of knowledge that is rigorous, relevant, and actionable.

The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world’s leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

The purpose of this paper is to address the gap between management research and management practice by suggesting that, in addition to rigor and relevance, management knowledge should be actionable to be of practical value. To this end, an index for evaluating actionability is proposed and empirically tested.

Based on reflective and formative conceptualizations of actionability and a critical review of both evidence-based management (EBMgt) and evidence-based medicine literature, the authors developed 40 items that would best represent attributes of actionable research. The authors asked 187 management scholars, members of the editorial boards of influential management journals, and practicing managers to rank the extent to which each item was important to their perceptions of research to be actionable in practice. The authors treated actionability as a two-level construct consisting of first-order reflective factors and second-order formative ones.

Using principal component analysis with varimax rotation six factors were extracted, explaining 68 percent of variance in actionability: operationality, which also included items from causality; contextuality; comprehensiveness; persuasiveness, which split into two dimensions of rigor and unbiasedness; and lastly comprehensibility. Using partial least squares analysis, the authors demonstrated that these six factors formatively contribute to an overall index of actionability of management research.

The index offers an empirical measure to advance research on EBMgt by facilitating theory testing in different management contexts.

The developed index promotes EBMgt by providing producers, disseminators, and users of management knowledge with a metric to appraise actionability of management knowledge.

This index is the first theory-based and empirically tested tool for effectively evaluating the practical value of management research.