Teaching evidence-based management: where do we go from here?

Abstract

Recently we talked with executive directors of healthcare organizations about the sources of information they use when conducting research. The responses were very similar. They preferred "googling," reading trusted trade journals, and reading more generic business literature such as Harvard Business Review. When asked if they ever read and used healthcare management research, they said the articles were often inaccessible. First, as CEOs faced with the responsibility for their organization's performance, they want to know whether there is anything in the research that will help them run their organizations better. Unfortunately, as observed by Gary Mecklenburg in this issue, the focus in healthcare research is too frequently on research implications, not on what a CEO wants and needs to know. As a result, the research is not always relevant. Further, by the time the research is conducted and published (it is not infrequent for more than a year to elapse from submission to actual publication in a journal, and by then the data may be two or more years old), executives have moved on to other decisions. As one of the CEOs observed, there is a gap between what she needs to know and what the health management literature has to say. Second, managers have limited time, and information needs to be succinct and to the point if it is to be useful. Research articles are very time consuming to read, and as the CEOs commented, time is a precious resource. Research articles frequently devote considerable space to conceptual development and methods, and even when managerial implications are addressed, managers