In Search of Evidence

Chapter 7
management using Spearman’s correlation coefficient. We used ordinal logistic
regression to determine whether managers’ attitudes towards evidence-based
management were associated with experience in conducting scientific research or
attention given to scientific research in their formal education. All tests were twotailed,
and the significance level was set at 5%. Results expressed a coefficient, an
effect size, a significance level, and a 95% confidence interval (CI 95%). We
conducted all analyses using SPSS 21 and NORM 2.03 (Schafer, 1997).
Results
RQ 1:
What evidence sources do managers consult in their daily practice?
As Table 2 indicates, most respondents base their decisions on personal
experience (94%), knowledge acquired through formal education (71%), intuition
(67%), advice from colleagues (64%), or insights provided by experts (63%). Only a
minority of those managers questioned replied that they base their decisions on
findings from scientific research (33%). One third of the respondents had never
heard of any peer-reviewed academic journal, and only a small minority (14%) had
ever read one. In addition, we asked respondents if they were familiar with online
research databases relevant to management. Results indicate that most managers
are unfamiliar with (and thus don’t use) online research databases. Most, however,
are familiar with Google Scholar.
RQ 2: What are managers’ attitudes towards the relevance and applicability of
research findings?
Table 3 summarizes managers’ attitudes towards the relevance and applicability
of research findings. Results suggest that a sizable group of managers (54%) are
interested in research findings and that most (80%) believe the topics investigated
have relevance for practice. A minority of respondents believes that researchers are
too far removed from the day-to-day work of practitioners (39%).
Several of the current authors have found through discussions on the barriers to
evidence-based management with managers that many seem to believe that their
own organizations are very different from others, and hence scientific findings from
those other organizations will not be relevant to their own. However, in the
present study most respondents disagreed with the statement that every
organization is unique and that research findings would not apply to individual
organizations (85%).