Research & Practice: Commentary: Ari Heller

Ari Heller, MD, MBA. Email to Pfeffer on May 5, 2006:

Dear Dr. Pfeffer,

Evidence Based Management (EBMgmt) can learn from the history and antecedents of Evidence Based Medicine (EBM).

Historically, Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) (which was developed by David Sackett MD) was a natural progression from Clinical Epidemiology.

You and Dr. Sutton may wish to review/browse thru David Sackett's excellent book entitled "CLINICAL EPIDEMIOLOGY" which includes many of the principles included in his book on Evidence Based Medicine. Hence, the scientific and methodological basis of Evidence-Based Medicine comes from Clinical Epidemiology.

The Clinical Epidemiology book provides a CLINICAL PROCESS for the Clinician as well as provides guidelines on how to critique articles and studies in clinical medicine.

This type of information is currently lacking in the management field.

I am not surprised with the feedback that you received from the MBA students at IESE Business School concerning Evidence Based Management in which they stated that management requires intuition and experience. One of the reasons that students, faculty
and practitioners would respond the way the MBA students from IESE responded is due to the fact that currently there is not a well defined CLINICAL PROCESS for practicing managers as well as definitions and classifications for managerial interventions and methods for evaluating the outcomes of managerial interventions.

Henry Mintzberg (McGill) created a SEPARATE Masters Program for the PRACTICE of MANAGEMENT (www.impm.org). But his program lacks Evidence Based Management as
outlined in your seminal book.

If one would ask faculty members (at a given school of business) in the fields of Management, Marketing and Operations Management where/what is the EVIDENCE for the courses that they offer then that may initiate an internal process of revising the MBA curriculum so that it can have an evidence basis.

Yes, this would require change; but the alternative is to continue to offer business education which lacks evidence.

Some PhD programs in Management have a strong focus on theory and empirical methods but not on the PRACTICE of MANAGEMENT and the evaluation of management practices. In turn these PhDs become faculty and often do not realize that they are in a Professional/Practice oriented school which trains practitioners. Thus, the training of business
faculty also requires the introduction of Evidence Based Management (EBMgmt).

Perhaps it is time to bring in faculty who have MD degrees into Business Schools because MDs have a well defined Clinical Process and Interventions.

The commencement speech of Dr. Gary Loveman (CEO of Harrah's and former professor at Harvard Business School) at the Olin School of Business (Washington University) states that people trust professors of medicine and law to help them in practice matters but that they do not trust business school professors.

I hope that you are enjoying yourself in Barcelona.

Regards,

Ari Heller, MD, MBA