Decisions in businesses and organizations are too often based on fads, fashions and the success stories of famous CEOs. At the same time, traditional models and new cutting-edge solutions often fail to deliver on what they promise. This situation leaves managers, business leaders, consultants and policymakers with a profound challenge: how can we stay away from trends and quick fixes, and instead use valid and reliable evidence to support the organization? In response to this problem, evidence-based management has evolved with the goal of improving the quality of decision-making by using critically evaluated evidence from multiple sources - organizational data, professional expertise, stakeholder values and scientific literature. This book sets out and explains the specific skills needed to gather, understand and use evidence to make better-informed organizational decisions. Evidence-Based Management is a comprehensive guide that provides current and future managers, consultants and organizational leaders with the knowledge and practical skills to improve the quality and outcome of their decision-making. Online resources include case studies, exercises, lecture slides and further reading.

The Oxford Handbook of Evidence-based Management shows how leaders and managers can make effective use of best available evidence in the decisions they make — and what educators and researchers need to do to help them come to the right solution.

Covering all commonly used interventions for acute and chronic low back pain conditions, Evidence-Based Management of Low Back Pain consolidates current scientific studies and research evidence into a single, practical resource. Its multidisciplinary approach covers a wide scope of treatments from manual therapies to medical interventions to surgery, organizing interventions from least to most invasive. Editors Simon Dagenais and Scott Haldeman, along with expert contributors from a variety of clinical and academic institutions throughout the world, focus on the best available scientific evidence, summarizing the results from the strongest to the weakest types of studies. No other book makes it so easy to compare the different interventions and treatment approaches, giving you the tools to make better, more informed clinical decisions. - A multidisciplinary approach covers treatments from manual therapies to medical interventions to surgery, and many others in between. - An interdisciplinary approach enables health care providers to work together. - A logical, easy-to-follow organization covers information by intervention type, from least invasive to most invasive. - Integration of interventions provides information in a clinically useful way, so it's easier to consider more than one type of treatment or intervention for low back pain, and easier to see which methods should be tried first. - 155 illustrations include x-rays, photos, and drawings. - Tables and boxes summarize key information. - Evidence-based content allows you to make clinical decisions based on the ranking the best available scientific studies from strongest to weakest. - Patient history and examination chapters help in assessing the patient's condition and in ruling out serious pathology before making decisions about specific interventions. - Experienced editors and contributors are proven authors, researchers, and teachers, and practitioners, well known in the areas of orthopedics, pain management, chiropractic, physical therapy, and behavioral medicine as well as complementary and alternative medicine; the book's contributors include some of the leading clinical and research experts in the field of low back pain. - Coverage based on The Spine Journal special issue on low back pain ensures that topics are relevant and up to date. - A systematic review of interventions for low back pain includes these categories: patient education, exercise and rehabilitation, medications, manual therapy, physical modalities, complementary and alternative medicine, behavioral modification, injections, minimally invasive procedures, and surgery. - Surgical interventions include decompression, fusion, disc arthroplasty, and dynamic stabilization. - Additional coverage includes patient education and multidisciplinary rehabilitation.

Over 50-years of management science distilled for everyday practice. The essential information you need to become an evidence-based manager from hiring to retention. Information is presented within 10 general lessons of management, a new case-study featuring two evidence-based managers in action, and thought-provoking questions at the end of each chapter. NEW to this edition: NEW Material on the importance of emotional intelligence NEW Chapter 5: on ways to engage your employees in their work NEW Chapter 6: on ways to ensure your career success NEW Chapter 7: on how to create a psychologically healthy workplace NEW Chapter 9: on the pitfalls to avoid when making decisions NEW Chapter 10: two leading-edge ways to coach and appraise the people on your team NEW End of chapter questions to reinforce learning

Learn what evidence-based management (EB management) is and how it can focus thinking and clarify the issues surrounding a decision. The book provides a straightforward process for asking the right questions, gathering supporting information from various sources, evaluating the information, and applying it to solve management challenges. Numerous real-life examples illustrate how the EB management approach is used in a variety of situations, from inpatient bed planning to operating room scheduling to leadership development. These examples also demonstrate the potential costs and benefits of EB management. Show more Show less.

There is a strong movement today in management to encourage management practices based on research evidence. In the first volume of this handbook, I asked experts in 39 areas of management to identify a central principle that summarized and integrated the core findings from their specialty area and then to explain this principle and give real business examples of the principle in action. I asked them to write in non-technical terms, e.g., without a lot of statistics, and almost all did so. The previous handbook proved to be quite popular, so I was asked to edit a second edition. This new edition has been expanded to 33 topics, and there are some new authors for the previously included topics. The new edition also includes: updated case examples, updated references and practical exercises at the end of each chapter. It also includes a preface on evidence-based management. The principles for the first edition were intended to be relatively timeless, so it is no surprise that most of the principles are the same (though some chapter titles include more than one principle). This book could serve as a textbook in advanced undergraduate and in MBA courses. It could also be of use to practicing managers and not just those in Human Resource departments. Every practicing manager may not want to read the whole book, but I am willing to guarantee that every one will find at least one or more chapters that will be practically useful. In this time of economic crisis, the need for effective management practices is more acute than ever.

The best organizations have the best talent. . . Financial incentives drive company performance. . . Firms must change or die. Popular axioms like these drive business decisions every day. Yet too much common management “wisdom” isn’t wise at all—but, instead, flawed knowledge based on “best practices” that are actually poor, incomplete, or outright obsolete. Worse, legions of managers use this dubious knowledge to make decisions that are hazardous to organizational health. Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton show how companies can bolster performance and trump the competition through evidence-based management, an approach to decision-making and action that is driven by hard facts rather than half-truths or hype. This book guides managers in using this approach to dismantle six widely held—but ultimately flawed—management beliefs in core areas including leadership, strategy, change, talent, financial incentives, and work-life balance. The authors show managers how to find and apply the best practices for their companies, rather than blindly copy what seems to have worked elsewhere. This practical and candid book challenges leaders to commit to evidence-based management as a way of organizational life—and shows how to finally turn this common sense into common practice.