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Theories matter because they affect behavior and can, under certain circumstances, become self-fulfilling. For a theory to become self-fulfilling, people must be aware of the theory and have the ability to make choices according to its dictates, social and physical arrangements are altered on the basis of the theory's prescriptions, and the proponents have the power to implement social arrangements consistent with the theory. Economics and other social science theories often fulfill these conditions, with implications not only for the work of scholars, but also for how we think about testing theories that can change the world they describe.

The quest for information and research-based insight is an obsession in the capital markets. There is a veritable industry of analysts, investment bankers, portfolio managers, and investors who seek any informational advantage, which is one reason that academics who study finance have been recruited to work on Wall Street and with money managers. Yet the potential payoff for using valid evidence is even greater when it comes to managing organizations. At the same time, however, imitation is much slower and less effective in the world of management practices, in part because such practices depend on tacit knowledge and implementation skill, on knowing not just what to do but how to do it. In addition, management practices and logic resist copying because of the power of precedent and ideology. Most managers actually try to act on the best evidence. They follow the business press, buy business books, hire consultants, and attend seminars featuring business experts. While companies sometimes benefit from these efforts, there is surprisingly little rigorous use or serious appreciation of evidence-based management. This article explores these obstacles and offers guidelines to enable managers to better practice evidence-based management.

PurposeThis article advocates for evidenced‐based management and aims to demonstrate how it works.Design/methodology/approachThe article identifies seven implementation principles to help people and companies that are committed to doing what it takes to profit from evidence‐based management.FindingsThe seven principles are: treat your organization as an unfinished prototype; no brag, just facts; see yourself and your organization as outsiders do; evidence‐based management is not just for senior executives; like everything else, you still need to sell evidenced‐based management; if all else fails, slow the spread of bad practices; and the best diagnostic question: what happens when people fail?Research limitations/implicationsA follow‐up article needs to show results when firms institute evidence‐based management.Practical implicationsA key underpinning of evidence‐based management are three truths: that most so‐called breakthrough ideas are either old, wrong, or both; that effective companies and leaders are more interested in what is true than what is new; and that those that do simple, obvious, and even seemingly trivial things well will dominate competitors who search for silver bullets and instant magic.Originality/valueThe article explains why the implementation of evidenced‐based management promotes competitive advantage.

According to Bazerman, economics has achieved its position of dominance simply because it provides prescriptions whereas other social sciences do not. We challenge his argument by showing that other social sciences do offer prescriptive advice but are nonetheless rarely influential. We argue that the mechanisms through which economics and other social sciences gain influence and affect practice should be investigated more carefully by management scholars seeking to understand how to have greater impact on both public policy and management practice.

States the top reason why managers should take notice of scholarly research is because actions based on sound evidence beat those based on suspect intuition every time. Posits that even academic research at its best is perhaps not that much of a better alternative to guru’s fads and fantasies.

The article discusses various papers published within the issue, including one by William McKinley and colleagues on determinants and development of schools in organization theory and another by Marianne Lewis and Andrew Grimes on metatriangulation.

Why, in light of all the substantial resources firms devote to improving their performance, do so few management practices actually change? In fact, knowledge management at many companies often makes the "knowing-doing" gap worse. This article explains why firms find it so difficult to translate knowledge into practice and offers a set of guidelines that address the sources of this problem. Knowing what to do is not enough; the challenge for managers is to figure out how to do what they know needs to be done.

The article relates a response from the authors of “Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management” to a discussion within the March 2007 issue of “...

Existing theory and research on organizational impression management focuses on how spokespersons use remedial tactics, following image-threatening events, to put their organization in the best possible light. By contrast, little theory or research has considered how organizations use impression management tactics to avert undesirable responses to upcoming events. This paper uses a qualitative and inductive study of billing procedures at three large hospitals to develop theory about how organization members use impression management tactics to fend off specific, expected challenges to organizational practices that are ambiguously negative. We found that hospitals use anticipatory impression management tactics to: (1) distract, diminish, or overwhelm patients' attention to hospital charges; and (2) to induce emotions that lead patients to simplify their information processing of those charges. Hospitals appear to use such anticipatory obfuscations both to fend off patients' initial challenges and to prevent their existing challenges from escalating. We discuss these findings in terms of their contributions to theories of symbolic management, social influence, and routine service encounters.

Most studies of organizational performance define performance as a dependent variable and seek to identify variables that produce variations in performance. Researchers who study organizational performance in this way typically devote little attention to the complications of using such a formulation to characterize the causal structure of performance phenomena. These complications include the ways in which performance advantage is competitively unstable, the causal complexity surrounding performance, and the limitations of using data based on retrospective recall of informants. Since these complications are well-known and routinely taught, a pattern of acknowledging the difficulties but continuing the practice cannot be attributed exclusively to poor training, lack of intelligence, or low standards. Most researchers understand the difficulties of inferring causal order from the correlations generated by organizational histories, particularly when those correlations may be implicit in the measurement procedures used. We suggest that the persistence of this pattern is due, in part, to the context of organizational research. Organizational researchers live in two worlds. The first demands and rewards speculations about how to improve performance. The second demands and rewards adherence to rigorous standards of scholarship. In its efforts to satisfy these often conflicting demands, the organizational research community sometimes responds by saying that inferences about the causes of performance cannot be made from the data available, and simultaneously goes ahead to make such inferences. We conclude by considering a few virtues and hazards of such a solution to dilemmas involving compelling contradictory imperatives and the generality of the issues involved.

Most existing writings imply that creative work is best done in physical and social isolation from outsiders, including case studies of successful product development teams that worked in isolation and psychological research showing that novel responses are inhibited when observers are present. In contrast, this article describes how one organization, IDEO Product Development, innovates routinely even though it has a constant and diverse stream of backstage visitors. IDEO uses visitors9 knowledge to enhance its creative work. Other benefits of such visits include enhancing the organization9s reputation and improving the innovation process in client organizations. This case implies that creative work does not always require isolation and that visitors can be brought backstage in ways that help rather than hamper creative work.

This essay asserts that, although qualitative methods now enjoy wide legitimacy among organizational researchers, there are still times when it is best to conceal or downplay the role that qualitative data played in developing an author's ideas. I identify four circumstances where treating qualitative research as a closet rather than an open activity may help authors write papers that flow better, are more convincing, and are more readily accepted for publication. These circumstances are when weak qualitative data lead to good insights, when describing the qualitative research reduces the quality of the writing, when an outlet does not publish “empirical” papers, and when writing for an audience that remains biased against qualitative research. I illustrate these points primarily with my own closet qualitative research, but also draw on Cialdini's writings on the qualitative inspiration for his experimental research and discussions with colleagues about how they have used closet qualitative research.

This paper draws on writings in psychology, sociology and organizational behavior to develop a conceptual framework that specifies how positive emotion helps employees obtain favorable outcomes at work. We propose that feeling and expressing positive emotions on the job have favorable consequences on: (1) employees independent of their relationships with others (e.g., greater persistence), (2) reactions of others to employees (e.g., “halo,” or overgeneralization to other desirable traits), and (3) reactions of employees to others (e.g., helping others). These three sets of intervening processes are proposed, in turn, to lead to work achievement, job enrichment and a higher quality social context. A partial test of this framework is made in an 18-month study of 272 employees. Results indicate that positive emotion on the job at time 1 is associated with evidence of work achievement (more favorable supervisor evaluations and higher pay) and a supportive social context (more support from supervisors and coworkers) at time 2. But positive emotion at time 1 is not significantly associated with job enrichment at time 2.

This article links institutional and impression management perspectives in a process model of how controversial and possibly unlawful actions of members of organizations can lead to endorsement and support from key constituencies. This model is grounded in interview, archival, and observational data concerning eight illegitimate actions attributed to members of two social movement organizations. We found that institutional conformity and decoupling illegitimate activities from legitimate structures facilitated spokespersons’ efforts to use impression management tactics that shifted attention away from the controversial actions and toward the socially desirable goals endorsed by broader constituencies. As a result, these organizations used publicity generated by illegitimate actions to obtain endorsement and support from those constituencies. We discuss the implications of the model for other kinds of organizations and derive testable propositions. We also consider implications for institutional and impres...

This article derives hypotheses from the threat-rigidity model about organizational responses tofinancial adversity. These hypotheses are tested in a national sample of 72 randomly selected drug abuse treatment organizations. We propose that decreasing funding levels and numbers of funding sources will be associated with four classes of rigidities in organizations: (a) restriction in information processing (rigid use of existing organizational procedures), (b) constriction of control (less participative decision making), (c) conservation of resources (work force reduction), and (d) competition among members. The threat-rigidity thesis is supported by findings that decreases in total budgets are associated with rigid use of existing procedures, work force reduction, and competition among organization members. Further; decreases in number offunding sources are associated with less participative decision making, work force reduction, and more competition among members.

A pair of qualitative and inductive studies are used to generate a model of how social influence strategies that entail displays of contrasting positive and negative emotions bring about compliance...

Using institutional theory, we developed predictions about organizational units that moved from an environment making consistent demands to one making conflicting demands. Many community mental hea...

The phrase "switching cognitive gears" is used to call attention to the fact that cognitive functioning involves the capacity to shift between cognitive modes, from automatic processing to conscious engagement and back again. Effectiveness may be as much a function of an actor's capacity to sense when a switch is appropriate, as to process in one or another mode. In this paper the authors develop a perspective on the switch from automatic to active thinking and the conditions that provoke it. They apply the perspective to work settings and identify types of situations in which actors are expected to switch from habits of mind to active thinking. They propose further work to develop a framework for understanding the switch from active thinking to automatic.

This study replicates and extends our prior research on expressed emotions. We propose that the levels of a store's busyness and customer demand influence the emotions service employees express dur...

For at least the past decade, the holy grail for companies has been innovation. Managers have gone after it with all the zeal their training has instilled in them, using a full complement of tried and true management techniques. The problem is that none of these practices, well suited for cashing in on old, proven products and business models, works very well when it comes to innovation. Instead, managers should take most of what they know about management and stand it on its head. In this article, Robert Sutton outlines several ideas for managing creativity that are clearly odd but clearly effective: Place bets on ideas without much heed to their projected returns. Ignore what has worked before. Goad perfectly happy people into fights among themselves. Good creativity management means hiring the candidate you have a gut feeling against. And as for the people who stick their fingers in their ears and chant, "I'm not listening, I'm not listening," when customers make suggestions? Praise and promote them. Using vivid examples from more than a decade of academic research to illustrate his points, the author discusses new approaches to hiring, managing creative people, and dealing with risk and randomness in innovation. His conclusions? The practices in this article succeed because they increase the range of a company's knowledge, allow people to see old problems in new ways, and help companies break from the past.

We are grateful to Steve Barley, Max Bazerman, Daniel Brass, Gary Alan Fine, Linda Pike, Robert Kahn, James March, Marshall Meyer, Keith Murnighan, Christine Oliver, and David Owens for their contributions to this essay. This essay was prepared while the first author was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. We appreciate the financial assistance provided by the Hewlett-Packard Corporation and the National Science Foundation (SBR-9022192). This essay describes differences between papers that contain some theory rather than no theory. The~re is little agreement about what constitutes strong versus weak theory in the social sciences, but there is more consensus that references, data, variables, diagrams, and hypotheses are not theory. Despite this consensus, however, authors routinely use these five elements in lieu of theory. We explain how each of these five elements can be confused with theory and how to avoid such confusion. By making this consensus explicit, we hope to help authors avoid some of the most common and easily averted problems that lead readers to view papers as having inadequate theory. We then discuss how journals might facilitate the publication of stronger theory. We suggest that if the field is serious about producing stronger theory, journals need to reconsider their empirical requirements. We argue that journals ought to be more receptive to papers that test part rather than all of a theory and use illustrative rather than definitive data.

Interview, archival, and observational data from four computer firms were used to develop a theory about how Chapter 11 of the Federal Bankruptcy Code spoils the image of top managers and firms. We...

Organizational research entails encounters with two groups of people who are usually labeled "nonparticipants": (1) those who are never asked to participate, but whom the investigator encounters during the data gathering, and (2) those selected to participate, but who cannot or will not do so. This paper demonstrates the value of these data for field research, particularly for studies that rely on questionnaires, interviews, and structured observations. The sequence of events typically associated with recruiting respondents and informants is proposed to create five key junctures at which research can be designed to gather such data. Ethical issues are raised concerning the use of information from nonparticipants.

A field study of 109 clerical workers explored work stations' characteristics as potential occupational stressors. Contrary to predictions, intrusions from atmospheric conditions and intrusions fro...

Declining organizations frequently, sometimes necessarily, reduce their work forces. This paper introduces a hierarchy of work force reduction strategies and advances a series of propositions focusing on organizational and environmental variables that influence the managerial choice of work force reduction strategies.

Literature on declining organizations focuses on two indicators of decreasing size—loss of financial resources and work force reduction. This effort to integrate the decline and size literatures combines psychological and sociological perspectives to distinguish between the effects of these two variables. Following the psychological threat-rigidity thesis, loss of financial resources is proposed to cause mechanistic shifts in organizational structures and jobs. We advance a more complex model about the influence of work force reduction that combines psychological and sociological perspectives. In the short term, the threat provoked by work force reduction brings about mechanistic shifts in structures and jobs. In the long term, however, the threat wanes and, following sociological theory, a second set of shifts occurs, in which less mechanistic means of coordination and control are used for the smaller work force.

Procrastination in organizations may have adverse effects on both individual well-being and system effectiveness, yet studies on this topic are sparse and theoretical development appears to be nonexistent. Procrastination is viewed here as the act of putting off a task that either the focal person or other role-senders expect should be done at the present time. Hence, the emphasis here is upon aspects of the work environment that give rise to procrastination rather than on habits and personality characteristics. Three categories of situational variables are proposed as predictors of task procrastination: characteristics of the task, the relationship between the focal task and other tasks, and attributes of the organization. Furthermore, task discretion is hypothesized to moderate the relationships between these sets of predictors and procrastination. The ways in which this framework may be useful for empirical research and as a starting point for subsequent theory generation are discussed. Finally, it is suggested that future research and theory-building should not focus exclusively upon the negative aspects of procrastination.

It has been proposed that the emotions expressed by role occupants influence the behavior of others. We hypothesized a positive relationship between employees' display of pleasant emotions to customers and sales in retail stores and tested that relationship in a sample of 576 convenience stores. An unexpected negative relationship was observed. A subsequent qualitative study suggested that sales is an indicator of a store's pace, or the amount of time pressure on clerks and customers, and that pace leads to displayed emotions, with norms in busy settings supporting neutral displays and norms in slow settings supporting positive displays. Reanalysis of the quantitative data confirmed that clerks in rapidly paced stores with high sales and long lines were less likely to display positive feelings than clerks in slow-paced stores.

The relationship between job-related stress and individual ill-being was explored in a random probability sample of 200 public schoolteachers. The responses of these teachers were used to (1) test the hypothesis that stress is positively related to personal strain; (2) explore the theoretically derived stress categories of role demands, instructional problems, and interpersonal relations as predictors of individual strain; and (3) identify individual stressors within these categories that are predictors of strain. The results indicate that teacher stress is related to strain and that role demands are the most important predictor of strain, followed by instructional problems and then by interpersonal relations. In addition, structural role conflict, interrole conflict, role overload, student discipline, and interpersonal conflict were identified as individual predictors of strain.

This paper advances a theory about the functions that parting ceremonies serve for members displaced by organizational deaths. The theory is grounded in data from 11 parties, picnics, and dinners t...

Research in organizational behavior focuses on expressed and felt emotions as indicators of employee health and satisfaction. In contrast, less conceptual and empirical work addresses the display of feelings as part of the job. This paper proposes a conceptual framework to guide theory development and research about the causes, qualities, and consequences of emotions that are expressed to fulfill role expectations.

The problem-solving framework developed by Georgopoulos and his associates was used in the present investigation to explore the relationships among problem-solving adequacy, the appropriateness of organizational structures, and effectiveness in 52 subunits of a large, general hospital. Evidence obtained from interviews with subunit managers or directors, interviews with hospital executives, and aggregated responses of unit members are used to explore these relationships. Following most closely from Georgopoulos and Cooke's (1979) version of the problem-solving framework, hypotheses were derived from the following two propositions: (1) organizational subunits are problem-facing open systems that must solve a set of generic problems to be effective and (2) organizational structures are problem-solving mechanisms. Drawing from this theoretical perspective, it was hypothesized that subunit structural appropriateness would be positively related to problem-solving adequacy and to effectiveness. Subunit problem-solving adequacy was also hypothesized to be positively related to effectiveness. Further, it was hypothesized that problem-solving adequacy would mediate the relationship between structural appropriateness and subunit effectiveness. The results provide support for all of these hypotheses, although the positive relationship between structural adequacy and effectiveness receives only limited confirmation.

Abstract A set of four hypotheses about the relationships between word processor attributes and employee perceptions of control and satisfaction are developed and then tested in a sample of 109 clerical workers. Findings from this perliminary study support the first hypothesis, that electronic word processors, in contrast to typewriters, increase an employee's ability to control his or her work. The second hypothesis, that users of both word processors and typewriters will report the highest levels of control, was not supported. The second part of the study concerns attributes of electronic word processors. The third hypothesis was that employees who use computers that are more dependable, easier to use, and have higher quality screens will report higher levels of control. This hypothesis was only partially supported. Support was found for the fourth hypothesis, that the above trio of computer attributes Would be positively related to employee satisfaction with the word processor. Practical impli...

I thank Reginald Bruce, Stanley Harris, and Susan Schurman for helping me gather these data. I thank Janice Beyer, Richard Daft, Thomas D'Aunno, Daniel Denison, Leonard Greenhalgh, Richard Hackman, Robert Kahn, Gerald Ledford, Debra Meyerson, Marina Park, Richard Price, John Van Maanen, Janet Weiss, and Mayer Zald for their help with this manuscript. I also wish to thank the ASQ editors and reviewers for their good advice. Portions of this paper were prepared while I was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. I am grateful for financial support provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. A qualitative and inductive study of eight organizational death is used to develop a model of how some dying organizations make the transition to death. The model focuses on the relationship between a dying organization and its members and on how leaders help orchestrate changes in the socially defined reality that members share about the organization's viability. The paper shows how the announcement that organizational death will occur encourages members to begin dismantling their organization. A key finding is that, contrary to leaders' predictions, members' efforts will often remain constant or increase after a closing is announced. A model to explain this phenomenon is created. The process of organizational death proposed here seems to best describe unambiguous organizational deaths that are announced in advance, those in which the organizations are dismantled through the efforts of their members, and those not characterized by severe conflict over the distribution of resources and obligations.'