Pfeffer Jeffrey, Sutton Robert I
Stanford Graduate School of Business, California, USA.
Harv Bus Rev. 2006 Jan;84(1):62-74, 133.
For the most part, managers looking to cure their organizational ills rely on obsolete knowledge they picked up in school, long-standing but never proven traditions, patterns gleaned from experience, methods they happen to be skilled in applying, and information from vendors. They could learn a thing or two from practitioners of evidence-based medicine, a movement that has taken the medical establishment by storm over the past decade. A growing number of physicians are eschewing the usual, flawed resources and are instead identifying, disseminating, and applying research that is soundly conducted and clinically relevant. It's time for managers to do the same. The challenge is, quite simply, to ground decisions in the latest and best knowledge of what actually works. In some ways, that's more difficult to do in business than in medicine. The evidence is weaker in business; almost anyone can (and many people do) claim to be a management expert; and a motley crew of sources--Shakespeare, Billy Graham,Jack Welch, Attila the Hunare used to generate management advice. Still, it makes sense that when managers act on better logic and strong evidence, their companies will beat the competition. Like medicine, management is learned through practice and experience. Yet managers (like doctors) can practice their craft more effectively if they relentlessly seek new knowledge and insight, from both inside and outside their companies, so they can keep updating their assumptions, skills, and knowledge.
在很大程度上，那些试图解决组织问题的管理者依赖于他们在学校学到的过时知识、长期存在但从未得到验证的传统、从经验中积累的模式、他们碰巧擅长应用的方法以及来自供应商的信息。他们可以从循证医学的实践者身上学到一些东西，在过去十年里，循证医学运动席卷了整个医疗机构。越来越多的医生正在摒弃那些常见的、有缺陷的资源，转而识别、传播和应用经过充分论证且与临床相关的研究成果。现在管理者也该这么做了。简单来说，挑战在于将决策建立在关于实际有效的最新、最佳知识基础之上。在某些方面，这在商业领域比在医学领域更难做到。商业领域的证据更薄弱；几乎任何人都可以（而且很多人确实）声称自己是管理专家；各种各样的来源——莎士比亚、比利·格雷厄姆、杰克·韦尔奇、匈奴王阿提拉等——都被用来提供管理建议。然而，当管理者依据更好的逻辑和有力的证据行事时，他们的公司将战胜竞争对手，这是有道理的。与医学一样，管理是通过实践和经验来学习的。然而，管理者（就像医生一样）如果能不断地从公司内部和外部寻求新知识和见解，就能更有效地实践他们的技艺，这样他们就能不断更新自己的假设、技能和知识。
