Post on 12-Nov-2014
description
Evidence-Based Management
What is it?
Why do we need it?
How does it look like in practice?
PhD Consortium of the 7th International
Conference of the Dutch HRM network
What is it?
Where does it come from?
Why do we need it?
What is stopping us?
How does is look like in practice?
Postgraduate Course
Evidence-Based Management
1. Evidence based management:
What is it?
Postgraduate Course
Four propositionsPostgraduate Course
Research produced by management scholars could be useful to
organizations
Drawing on available evidence (including research produced by
academics) is likely to improve decisions
Managers and organizations do not appear to be strongly aware
of nor use research findings
We need to increase awareness of and access to research
findings
What is EBMgt?Postgraduate Course
Evidence-based management is about making
decisions through the conscientious, explicit,
and judicious use of four sources of information:
practitioner expertise and judgment, evidence
from the local context, a critical evaluation of
the best available research evidence, and the
perspectives of those people who might be
affected by the decision.
(Briner, Denyer, Rousseau, 2009)
What is EBMgt?Postgraduate Course
The problem is that management is not as
evidence-based as it should be nor as it could be
What is EBMgt?Postgraduate Course
It is not a completely new idea – managers and
organizations use evidence all the time
EBMgt is different because it’s about:
Increasing the types of evidence we use
Using it more thoughtfully and carefully
(conscientious, judicious, explicit)
Its only purpose is to help us make better
decisions through more and more systematic
use of evidence
Who says it’s a problem?Postgraduate Course
People in many other fields (medicine, social
work, criminology, politicians) say it’s a
problem in their fields
Not everyone in management but some of
people think it’s a problem
Some academics and researchers
Some managers and organizations
Some professional associations
Some commentators and journalists
• 9
Origins of EBMgtPostgraduate Course
Management not the only field where there are these concerns. What field is this?
“a research-user gap” “practitioners do not read academic journals” “the findings of research into what is an effective intervention are
not being translated into actual practice” “academics not practitioners are driving the research agenda” “the relevance, quality and applicability of research is
questionable” “practice is being driven more by fads and fashions than
research” “many practices are doing more harm than good” “the collective wisdom from research is being lost”
Evidence-Based PracticePostgraduate Course
1991Medicine
1998Education
1998Probation service
1999Housing policy
1999Social care
2000Nursing
2000Criminal justice
????Management?
Academic interest in EBMgtPostgraduate Course
Similar ideas around for a long time
2003 – Systematic reviews of evidence
2006 – Rousseau EBMgt Presidential Address and
Pfeffer & Sutton book
2007-2009 – Rousseau EBMgt Collaborative
2008-2011 – Several conferences
2011 – Center for Evidence-Based Management
(CEBMa) in Amsterdam
2011 – EBMgt Handbook
But many researchers not interested at all in EBMgt
Manager & practitioner interest in EBMgt
Some HRM and professional bodies express
interest (SHRM, SIOP, VOV Learning Network)
Some Universities running courses for
practitioners (e.g., Amsterdam, Ghent)
Some publications for practitioners
But managers are: Used to working in a different way
Under pressure to adopt fads and fashions
Have high expectations of evidence
Managers used to working in a different way:
Need to act quickly: Speed more
important than accuracy
Organizational politics
Formal authority and hierarchies
Over-emphasize experience
Rewarded for getting things done not
doing what works
Sometimes we are evidence-based
Try to gather data and information
Invest time and effort in trying to
understand and apply it
Question our and others’ assumptions and
logic
Are sceptical about what appear to be fads
Resist the temptation to act quickly
Sometimes we are not so evidence-based
Act on gut feeling (though intuition can be
important for some decisions)
Copy other people who appear successful
(benchmarking)
Think there is one ideal way (best practice)
Let the ‘solution’ frame and define our ‘problem’
and create need (kitchen gadgets)
Want to fit in and be as cool as everyone else
(fashion)
2. Evidence based management:
Where does it come from?
Postgraduate Course
McMaster University Medical School, Canada
Medicine: Founding fathers
David Sackett Gordon Guyatt
Postgraduate Course
Problem I: too much information
More than 1 million articles in 40.000 medical journals per
year (= 1995; now probably more than 2 million). For a
specialist to keep up this means reading 25 articles every
day (for a GP more than 100!)
Most of the new insights and treatment
methods don’t reach the target group
Postgraduate Course
Problem II: persistent convictions
if you’re hyperventilating
breathe into a bag
Postgraduate Course
Problem III: jumping to conclusions
people who have an irregular heartbeat are much more likely to die
of coronary disease
give them a drug that reduces the number of
irregular beats
Postgraduate Course
Examples of mechanistic reasoning gone wrong:
Oestrogen replacement therapy to reduce cardiac events and stroke
in post-menopausal women.
Treatment of measles with antibiotics.
Rest for recovery.
Placing babies on their fronts to prevent Sudden Infant Death
Syndrome (SIDS).
Debriefing after psychological trauma
Postgraduate Course
Problem IV
David Sackett
Half of what you learn in medical school will be
shown to be either dead wrong or out-of-date
within 5 years of your graduation; the trouble is that
nobody can tell you which half.
The most important thing to learn is how to learn
on your own.
(Remember that your teachers are as full of bullshit
as your parents)
Postgraduate Course
David Sackett
“Good doctors use both individual clinical expertise and
the best available external evidence, and neither alone is
enough. Without clinical expertise, practice risks
becoming tyrannized by evidence, for even excellent
external evidence may be inapplicable to or inappropriate
for an individual patient. Without current best evidence,
practice risks becoming rapidly out of date, to the
detriment of patients.”
Evidence based decisionPostgraduate Course
Management: Founding MotherPostgraduate Course
Jeffrey Pfeffer Robert Sutton
Management: Founding FathersPostgraduate Course
2. Evidence-based management:
Why do we need it?
Postgraduate Course
EBMgt: some basic assumptionsPostgraduate Course
Research produced by management scholars could be useful to
organizations
Drawing on available evidence (including research produced by
academics) is likely to improve decisions
Organizations do not appear to be strongly aware of nor use
research findings
EBMgt is a potentially useful way of thinking about how we can
incorporate research evidence into decision-making
Reason 1:
Errors and Biases of Human Judgment
Postgraduate Course
Seeing order in randomness
Mental corner cutting
Misinterpretation of incomplete data
Halo effect
False consensus effect
Reinterpreting evidence
Group think
Self serving bias
Sunk cost fallacy
Cognitive dissonance reduction
Postgraduate Course
Errors and Biases of Human Judgment
Confirmation bias
Authority bias
In-group bias
Recall bias
Anchoring bias
Inaccurate covariation detection
Distortions due to plausibility
Seeing order in randomness Mental corner cutting
Misinterpretation of incomplete data
Halo effect
False consensus effect
Reinterpreting evidence
Group think
Self serving bias
Sunk cost fallacy
Cognitive dissonance reduction
Postgraduate Course
Errors and Biases of Human Judgment
Confirmation bias
Authority bias
In-group bias
Recall bias
Anchoring bias
Inaccurate covariation detection
Distortions due to plausibility
We are predisposed to see order, pattern and causal
relations in the world.
Patternicity: The tendency to find meaningful patterns in
both meaningful and meaningless noise.
Postgraduate Course
Seeing order in randomness
We are pattern seeking primates: association learning
Postgraduate Course
Seeing order in randomness
Postgraduate Course
Points of impact of V-1 bombs in London
Postgraduate Course
Points of impact of V-1 bombs in London
A Type I error or a false positive, is
believing a pattern is real when it is not
(finding a non existent pattern)
A Type II error or a false negative, is
not believing a pattern is real when it is
(not recognizing a real pattern)
Postgraduate Course
Errors and Biases of Human Judgment
Dr. Michael Shermer
(Director of the Skeptics Society)
A Type I error or a false positive: believe that the
rustle in the grass is a dangerous predator when it is
just the wind (low cost)
Postgraduate Course
Errors and Biases of Human Judgment
A Type II error or a false negative: believe that the
rustle in the grass is just the wind when it is a
dangerous predator (high cost)
Postgraduate Course
Errors and Biases of Human Judgment
Pattern detection problem
Assessing the difference between a Type I and
Type II error is highly problematic (especially in
split second ‘life and death’ situations), so the
default position is to assume
all patterns are real.
Postgraduate Course
Errors and Biases of Human Judgment
Postgraduate Course
Errors and Biases of Human Judgment
Jennifer Whitson, University of Texas Austin, corporate environments
Postgraduate Course
Errors and Biases of Human Judgment
Erroneous beliefs plaque both experienced
professionals and less informed laypeople alike.
stress peptic ulcer
Peptic ulcer – an infectious disease!
This year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine goes to Barry Marshall and Robin
Warren, who with tenacity and a prepared mind challenged prevailing dogmas. By
using technologies generally available (fibre endoscopy, silver staining of
histological sections and culture techniques for microaerophilic bacteria), they
made an irrefutable case that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori is causing disease.
By culturing the bacteria they made them amenable to scientific study.
In 1982, when this bacterium was discovered by Marshall and Warren, stress and
lifestyle were considered the major causes of peptic ulcer disease. It is now
firmly established that Helicobacter pylori
causes more then 90% of duodenal ulcers.
The link between Helicobacter pylori
infection and peptic ulcer disease has been
established through studies of human
volunteers, antibiotic treatment studies and
epidemiological studies.
Oct 2005
Postgraduate Course
Errors and Biases of Human Judgment
Doctors, teachers, lawyers and managers hold many
erroneous beliefs, not because they are ignorant or
stupid, but because they seem to be the most sensible
conclusion consistent with the available evidence.
They hold such beliefs because they seem to be the
irresistible products of their own professional experience.
They are the products, not of irrationality, but of flawed
rationality
Managers seem to be extremely good at generating
ideas, theories, and explanations that have the ring of
plausibility. They may be relatively deficient, however,
in evaluating and testing those ideas once they are
formed.
This requires that we think critically about experience,
question our assumptions, and challenge what we
think we know
(Show me the evidence!)
Postgraduate Course
Errors and Biases of Human Judgment
3. Evidence-based management:
What is stopping us?
Postgraduate Course
Postgraduate Course
Quick fixes (1)
What is the quick fix? A ‘solution’ which Focuses on style and presentation not content
Is not evaluated
Is always slower than we hoped
Usually doesn’t work
Is followed by another quick fix
Everybody forgets and becomes subject to
organizational amnesia
Postgraduate Course
Quick fixes (2)
So why do we do quick fixes?
Can be career-enhancing for managers
(e.g., issue selling, kick-ass CEOs)
Speed is often valued over accuracy
Heavily sold and marketed
Are we all looking for quick and easy
solutions?
So who needs or wants academic research?
• 57
• 58
• 59
• 60
• 61
• 62
• 63
• 64
Postgraduate Course
Management Fads (1)
The nearly-forgotten fads Scientific Management/Taylorism
Business Process Reengineering
Management by results
Excellence
Total Quality Management
Learning Organizations
Knowledge Management
Postgraduate Course
Management Fads (2)
The fads that haven’t been forgotten (yet) Talent management
Management development
Executive coaching
Emotional intelligence
Employee engagement
Myers Briggs Type Indicator
Belbin Team Roles
General concern about the destructive impact of fads
from both practitioners and researchers
• 67
• 68
• 69
• 70
• 71
• 72
• 73
• 74
• 75
• 76
FADS* SEEM TO BE ATTRACTIVE, COMPELLING AND IRRESISTIBLE
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!
• 78
• 79
• 80
dDwtNzI3
• 81
Seeing order in randomness
Mental corner cutting
Misinterpretation of incomplete data
Halo effect
False consensus effect
Reinterpreting evidence
Group think
Postgraduate Course
Errors and Biases of Human Judgment
Confirmation bias
Authority bias In-group bias
Recall bias
Anchoring bias
Inaccurate covariation detection
Distortions due to plausibility
Postgraduate Course
Under 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?
Postgraduate Course
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)
Under pressure to adopt fads
4. Evidence based management:
How does it look like in practice?
Postgraduate Course
Postgraduate Course
Four sources
Postgraduate Course
JAMA, 1992
Postgraduate Course
Push vs Pull
Push: teaching (management) principles
based upon a convergent body of
research and telling students what to do.
Pull: teaching (managers) how to find,
appraise and apply the outcome of
research (evidence) by themselves
Postgraduate Course
The 5 steps of ‘pull’ EBP
1. Formulate an answerable question
2. Search for the best available evidence
3. Critically appraise the evidence
4. Integrate the evidence with your managerial
expertise and organisational concerns and apply
5. Monitor the outcome
Postgraduate Course
The 5 steps of ‘pull’ EBP
1. Formulate an answerable question
2. Search for the best available evidence
3. Critically appraise the evidence
4. Integrate the evidence with your managerial
expertise and organisational concerns and apply
5. Monitor the outcome
Answerable question
Postgraduate Course
I am a consultant, my client a large health-care
organization. The board of directors has plans for a
merger with a smaller healthcare organization. However,
it’s been said that the organizational culture differs widely
between the two organizations. The board want’s to
know if this can impede a successful outcome.
Postgraduate Course
P = Population or problem
I = Intervention or successfactor
C = Comparison
O = Outcome
C = Context
Answerable question: PICO(C)
Answerable question: PICOC
Postgraduate Course
P: What kind of Population are we talking about? Middle managers,
back-office employees, medical staff, clerical staff?
O: What kind of Outcome are we aiming for? Employee productivity,
return on investment, profit margin, competitive position, innovation
power, market share, customer satisfaction?
P/C: And how is the assumed cultural difference assessed? Is it the
personal view of some managers or is it measured by a validated
instrument?
Postgraduate Course
The 5 steps of ‘pull’ EBP
1. Formulate an answerable question
2. Search for the best available evidence
3. Critically appraise the evidence
4. Integrate the evidence with your managerial
expertise and organisational concerns and apply
5. Monitor the outcome
Where do we search?Postgraduate Course
•Postgraduate School
Where do we search?
Postgraduate Course
The 5 steps of ‘pull’ EBP
1. Formulate an answerable question
2. Search for the best available evidence
3. Critically appraise the evidence
4. Integrate the evidence with your managerial
expertise and organisational concerns and apply
5. Monitor the outcome
Critical appraisal
How to read a research article?
Postgraduate Course
Critical appraisalPostgraduate Course
1. Study designs
2. Levels of evidence
3. Bias / confounding
4. Effect sizes
5. External validity
Postgraduate Course
Which study for which question?
Research designs
The “best” evidence depends on the question type !
Postgraduate Course
Levels of evidence
Postgraduate Course
The 5 steps of ‘pull’ EBP
1. Formulate an answerable question
2. Search for the best available evidence
3. Critically appraise the evidence
4. Integrate the evidence with your
managerial expertise and organisational
concerns and apply
5. Monitor the outcome
Postgraduate Course
1. Is your organization / division / population so different from those in the study that its results cannot apply?
2. How relevant is the study to what you are seeking to understand or decide?
3. What are your organization’s potential benefits and harms from the intervention?
4. Is the intervention feasible in your setting?
Organization concerns
Always ask yourself to what extent the evidence is applicable in your situation:
Postgraduate Course
The 5 steps of ‘pull’ EBP
1. Formulate an answerable question
2. Search for the best available evidence
3. Critically appraise the evidence
4. Integrate the evidence with your managerial
expertise and organisational concerns and apply
5. Monitor the outcome
Postgraduate Course
Monitor the outcome
posttest?
pretest?
control group?
Postgraduate Course
Do a trial!
(*). Why should academics be interested in EBMgt?
Postgraduate Course
(5). Evidence based management:
What can you do as a PhD student?
Postgraduate Course
Postgraduate Course
Barriers
Postgraduate Course
Best available evidence
=
systematic reviews
Barriers
Postgraduate Course
Postgraduate Course
Postgraduate Course
Better than a single study: a replication study
Better than a replication study:a systematic review / meta analysis
If there were 100 RCT’s, 99 of which gave a ‘negative’ result (where, say, the new intervention appeared to be harmful), while one had a ‘positive’ result (were the intervention appeared helpful), it would obviously be a mistake to consider only the single positive RCT.
Postgraduate Course
• 115
TYPES OF LITERATURE REVIEW
Explicit systematic: Explicit use of rigorous method - can vary as least as much as the range of methods in primary research
Implicit systematic: rigorous method but not statedFalse systematic: described as systematic but with little evidence of
explicit rigorous methodArgument/thematic: a review that aims to explore and usually
support a particular argument or theme with no pretension to use an explicit rigorous method (though thematic reviews can be systematic)
Expert or ad hoc review: informed by the skill and experience of the reviewer but no clear method so open to hidden bias.
Rapid evidence assessment: a rapid review that may or may not be rigorous and systematic. If it is systematic then in order to be rapid it is likely to be limited in some explicit aspect of scope.(Gough 2007)
• 116
LITERATURE REVIEWS IN MANAGEMENTHow many here have had training in reviewing literature?Are we really “standing on the shoulders of giants”?Do you recognize these sort of unqualified statements?• “Previous studies have shown that…”• “It has been demonstrated that…”
But how many studies? Demonstrated how? Did other studies find something else?
Very few systematic reviews in management
WHAT QUALITIES SHOULD LITERATURE REVIEWS HAVE?
• 118
WHAT QUALITIES SHOULD LITERATURE REVIEWS HAVE?Comprehensive?Reader-friendly?Informative?Balanced?Insightful?Critical?Rigorous?Accessible?User led?Up-to-date?
Focused?Exploratory?Inclusive? (of different types of evidence)Transparent? Accurately referenced?Objective?Replicable?Interesting?Standardized?
• 119
WHAT IS A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW?It’s research on existing research
With a clear, explicit and replicable methodology• Clear review question• Search strategy• Quality criteria
Allows us to draw reliable conclusions about what we know and do not know about a given question or problem
Systematic review
The intention behind a systematic review is to identify as fully
as possible all the scientific studies of relevance to a particular
subject and to assess the validity and authority of the evidence
of each study separately. As the name indicates, a systematic
review takes a systematic approach to identifying studies and
has the methodological quality critically appraised by multiple
researchers independently of each other, as a consequence of
which the review is transparent and reproducible and can be
monitored. The use of statistical analysis techniques in a
systematic review to pool the results of the individual studies
numerically in order to achieve a more accurate estimate of
the effect is termed a “meta-analysis”.
Postgraduate Course
• 122
THE QUESTIONS SRs ANSWER
For any given specific problem:What do we know?
What do we not know?
What are we not sure about?
How do we know we know or don’t know or are not sure that…?
What is the basis for our claims? (e.g., How much evidence? What quality?)
Stages of a SR
Existing research
studies
SYSTEMATIC REVIEW
1. problem formulation;
2. locating studies;
3. study selection and evaluation;
4. analysis and synthesis;
5. reporting of the results
What do we
know?
What we do not know?
Informs practice
Informs future
research questions
Practice-
relevant
question
Stages of a systematic reviewPostgraduate Course
1. Formulate a focussed review
question
2. Search for the best available evidence
3. Select relevant studies
4. Critically appraise the evidence
5. Synthesise the findings
6. Report what is known
• 125
WHAT SORT OF QUESTIONS CAN BE ADDRESSED IN A SR?
Each would require much more specificity
Does team-building work?
Can you improve emotional intelligence?
Do increases in EI lead to performance improvements?
Does management development improve the performance of managers?
Does employee engagement predict organizational performance?
Is 360 degree feedback effective?
Can potentially great leaders be identified?
Is coaching effective?
Does team-building work?
How would you make this question more specific
Postgraduate Course
P = Population
I = Intervention or factor
C = Comparison
O = Outcome
C = Context
PICOC & CIMO
C = Context
I = Intervention or
factor
M = Mechanism
O = Outcome
• 128
WHAT SORT OF QUESTIONS CAN BE ADDRESSED IN A SR?Does team-building work?• What is meant by ‘team’? And what is not included as a ‘team’?• What kind of teams?• In which particular contexts or settings?• What is ‘team building’? And what is not ‘team building’?• What does ‘work’ mean?• ‘Work’ compared to any other team intervention? No intervention?• What outcomes are relevant?• What are the mechanisms, processes and theory which might
account for possible effects of team building on outcomes?• What time periods are relevant for observing any possible effects?• What about possible negative effects or harm?• What types of data from what sorts of designs would in principle
provide good quality, medium quality and poor quality evidence?
Postgraduate School
Which study for which question?
Research questionQualitative
studiesSurveys
Observational studies
Controlled studies
Effectiveness: does it work?, does A work better than B? + ++Process: how does it work, why does it work? ++ +Context: in what circumstances does it work, for whom? ++ + +Safety: will it do more good than harm? + + ++Acceptability: will the target group accept the intervention / new method of working? ++ + +Cost effectiveness: does it reduce costs? is A cheaper than B? ++Appropriateness: is this the right intervention / method for this target group? ++ ++
Satisfaction: is the target group satisfied with the new method of working? ++ ++ +
Stages of a systematic reviewPostgraduate Course
1. Formulate a focussed review question
2. Search for the best available evidence
3. Select relevant studies
4. Critically appraise the evidence
5. Synthesise the findings
6. Report what is known
• 131
MAKING DECISIONS ABOUT SEARCH STRATEGYWhat sources of evidence?
What sources will you include or exclude and why?
How iterative can you be?• Test the question doing some simple searches• Does the question work?• Does the search strategy work?
Postgraduate School
Two types of search strategies
Search strategy
Building blocks methodSnowball method
Postgraduate School
Snowball method
Starting from one book or article, you search for other literature on the same topic.
Snowballing to older publications by finding out which publications were used by the author (see bibliography of book or article).
Snowballing to more recent publications by finding out how often that book or article has been cited by other authors (see Web of Knowledge).
Postgraduate School
Snowball method
ISI Web of Knowledge
Postgraduate School
Synonyms or
related terms
• ….
• ….
• ….
• ….
Synonyms or
related terms
• ….
• ….
• ….
• ….
Synonyms or
related terms
• ….
• ….
• ….
• ….
Building blocks method
Synonyms or
related terms
• ….
• ….
• ….
• ….
Keyword 1 Keyword 2 Keyword 3 Keyword 4
AND AND AND
OR OR OR
Postgraduate School
Postgraduate School
Building blocks method
Postgraduate School
Building blocks method
Stages of a systematic reviewPostgraduate Course
1. Formulate a focussed review question
2. Search for the best available evidence
3. Select relevant studies4. Critically appraise the evidence
5. Synthesise the findings
6. Report what is known
Stages of a systematic reviewPostgraduate Course
1. Formulate a focussed review question
2. Search for the best available evidence
3. Select relevant studies
4. Critically appraise the evidence
5. Synthesise the findings
6. Report what is known
•Postgraduate School
Standard appraisal questions
1. Did the study adress a clearly focused issue?
2. Is the sample size justified?
3. Is the design appropriate to the stated aims?
4. Are te measurements likely to be valid and reliable?
5. Are the statistical methods described?
6. Did untoward events occur during the study?
7. Were the basic data adequately described?
8. Do the numbers add up?
9. Was the statistical significance assessed?
10. What do the findings mean?
11. Are important effects overlooked?
12. What implications does the study have for your practice?
Stages of a systematic reviewPostgraduate Course
1. Formulate a focussed review question
2. Search for the best available evidence
3. Select relevant studies
4. Critically appraise the evidence
5. Synthesise the findings
6. Report what is known
Once a body of evidence has been collated….
How relevant is this to what we are seeking to understand or decide?
How representative is this of the population that concerns us?
How reliable, how well-founded theoretically, empirically is it?
‘These are tough but necessary tests for evidence based policy and practice’ Solesbury 2004
Stages of a systematic reviewPostgraduate Course
1. Formulate a focussed review question
2. Search for the best available evidence
3. Select relevant studies
4. Critically appraise the evidence
5. Synthesise the findings
6. Report what is known
What does synthesis mean in MOS?
Analysis,• “…is the job of systematically breaking down something into its
constituent parts and describing how they relate to each other – it is not random dissection but a methodological examination”
• Is the aim is to extract key data, ideas, theories, concepts [arguments] and methodological assumptions from the literature?
Synthesis,• “…is the act of making connections between the parts identified in
analysis. It is about recasting the information into a new or different arrangement. That arrangement should show connections and patterns that have not been produced previously”
(Hart, 1998: p.110)
• 146
Summarizing evidence
What does the evidence say?
Consistency of evidence?
Quality of evidence
Quantity of evidence (avoiding double counting)
The example of management and leadership development
Does leadership development work?
What do we know?
What is the ‘best’ research evidence available?
How can this evidence be ‘put together’?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches to synthesis?
What methods of synthesis are available? (1/2)
Aggregated synthesis
Analytic induction
Bayesian meta analysis
Case Survey
Comparative case study
Constant targeted comparison
Content analysis
Critical interpretive synthesis
Cross design synthesis
Framework analysis
Grounded theory
Hermeneutical analysis
Logical analysis
Meta analysisMeta ethnographyMeta narrative mappingMeta needs assessmentMeta synthesisMetaphorical analysisMixed method synthesisNarrative synthesisQuasi statisticsRealist synthesisReciprocal analysisTaxonomic analysisThematic synthesisTheory driven synthesis
What methods of synthesis are available? (2/2)
Synthesis by aggregation• extract and combine data from separate studies to increase the
effective sample size.
Synthesis by integration• collect and compare evidence from primary studies employing
two or more data collection methods.
Synthesis by interpretation• translate key interpretations / meanings from one study to
another.
Synthesis by explanation • identify causal mechanisms and how they operate.
• (Rousseau, Manning, Denyer, 2008)
Van Buren & Erskine, 2002 (building on Kirkpatrick)
Organizations reported collecting data on:
78% reaction (how participants have reacted to the programme)
32% learning (what participants have learnt from the programme)
9% behaviour (whether what was learnt is being applied on the job)
7% results (whether that application is achieving results)
Stages of a systematic reviewPostgraduate Course
1. Formulate a focussed review question
2. Search for the best available evidence
3. Select relevant studies
4. Critically appraise the evidence
5. Synthesise the findings
6. Report what is known
Postgraduate School
What do you do with this?
Does management and leadership development work
Overall, the results suggest a medium to large effect size for learning and behaviour (largely based on self report)
Absence of evidence of impact of business impact
Do the results of synthesis create clarity - or confusion, conflict and controversy?
“A wide variety of program outcomes are reported in the literature – some that are
effective, but others that are failing. In some respects the lessons for practice can be found in the wide variance reported in these studies. The range of effect sizes clearly shows that it
is possible to have very large positive outcomes, or no outcomes at all” (p. 240/241)
(Collins and Holton, 1996: 240/241)
Do the results of synthesis create clarity - or confusion, conflict and controversy?
“Organizations should feel comfortable that their managerial leadership development programmes will produce substantial results, especially if they offer the right development programs for the right people at the
right time. For example, it is important to know whether a six-week training session is enough or the
right approach to develop new competencies that change managerial behaviours, or it is individual feedback from a supervisor on a weekly basis
regarding job performance that is most effective?”
(Collins and Holton, 1996: 240/241)
systematic reviewPostgraduate Course
Example
• 157
Flexible working conditions and their effects on employee health and wellbeing (Joyce et al, 2010)
Background: Flexible working conditions are increasingly popular in developed countries but the effects on employee health and wellbeing are largely unknown.
Objectives: To evaluate the effects (benefits and harms) of flexible working interventions on the physical, mental and general health and wellbeing of employees and their families.
Search strategy: Our searches (July 2009) covered 12 databases including the Cochrane Public Health Group Specialized Register, CENTRAL; MEDLINE; EMBASE; CINAHL; PsycINFO; Social Science Citation Index; ASSIA; IBSS; Sociological Abstracts; and ABI/Inform. We also searched relevant websites, hand searched key journals, searched bibliographies and contacted study authors and key experts.
• 158
Flexible working conditions and their effects on employee health and wellbeing (Joyce et al, 2010)
Selection criteria: Randomized controlled trials (RCT), interrupted time series and controlled before and after studies (CBA), which examined the effects of flexible working interventions on employee health and wellbeing. We excluded studies assessing outcomes for less than six months and extracted outcomes relating to physical, mental and general health/ill health measured using a validated instrument. We also extracted secondary outcomes (including sickness absence, health service usage, behavioral changes, accidents, work-life balance, quality of life, health and wellbeing of children, family members and co-workers) if reported alongside at least one primary outcome.
Data collection and analysis: Two experienced review authors conducted data extraction and quality appraisal. We undertook a narrative synthesis as there was substantial heterogeneity between studies.
• 159
Flexible working conditions and their effects on employee health and wellbeing (Joyce et al, 2010)
Main results: Ten studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Six CBA studies reported on interventions relating to temporal flexibility: self-scheduling of shift work (n = 4), flexitime (n = 1) and overtime (n = 1). The remaining four CBA studies evaluated a form of contractual flexibility: partial/gradual retirement (n = 2), involuntary part-time work (n = 1) and fixed-term contract (n = 1). The studies retrieved had a number of methodological limitations including short follow-up periods, risk of selection bias and reliance on largely self-reported outcome data. Four CBA studies on self-scheduling of shifts and one CBA study on gradual/partial retirement reported statistically significant improvements in either primary outcomes (including systolic blood pressure and heart rate; tiredness; mental health, sleep duration, sleep quality and alertness; self-rated health status) or secondary health outcomes (co-workers social support and sense of community) and no ill health effects were reported. Flexitime was shown not to have significant effects on self-reported physiological and psychological health outcomes. Similarly, when comparing individuals working overtime with those who did not the odds of ill health effects were not significantly higher in the intervention group at follow up. The effects of contractual flexibility on self-reported health (with the exception of gradual/partial retirement, which when controlled by employees improved health outcomes) were either equivocal or negative. No studies differentiated results by socio-economic status, although one study did compare findings by gender but found no differential effect on self-reported health outcomes.
• 160
Flexible working conditions and their effects on employee health and wellbeing (Joyce et al, 2010)
Authors’ conclusions: The findings of this review tentatively suggest that flexible working interventions that increase worker control and choice (such as self scheduling or gradual/partial retirement) are likely to have a positive effect on health outcomes. In contrast, interventions that were motivated or dictated by organizational interests, such as fixed-term contract and involuntary part-time employment, found equivocal or negative health effects. Given the partial and methodologically limited evidence base these findings should be interpreted with caution. Moreover, well-designed intervention studies are needed to delineate the impact of flexible working conditions on health, wellbeing and health inequalities.