Introduction to Evidence-Based Management

 

Since the business field of study is new to me, all that I have learned during the first week session is: Introduction to Evidence-Based Management is more than worthy. It has given me an opportunity to experience new perspectives, ways of thinking, and decision making. There are two most important concepts that are useful and basically reflect general decision practices that most businesses do, but they are not exactly the most effective ways that businesses are supposed to operate. First, in Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense written by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton, the authors point out three of the most common practices: casual benchmarking; doing what (seems to have) worked in the past; and following deeply held yet unexamined ideologies that most companies do in decision practices, but are the most harmful to the companies (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006, p. 6). All these practices sound basic, otherwise they might possibly flaw the companies. In this paragraph I will discuss one of the three concepts that we have usually seen in many business practices: casual benchmarking. According to Pfeffer and Sutton (2006), casual benchmarking is a “learning from others’ experience - vicarious learning, as contrasted with direct experience … It is a lot cheaper and easier to learn from the mistakes, setbacks, and successes of others than to treat every management challenge as something no organization has ever faced before” (p. 6). However, this is not always so efficient since some companies “copy the most visible, obvious, and frequently least important practices,” but do not look through inside culture and management philosophies that those model companies use within their organizations (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006, p. 7). For example, in the Fall 2013 semester, I did a commodity chain analysis on coconut water. I did research on major competitive coconut water brands, each with a different mission and strategy in marketing to promote their brands. One of these brands has used sustainable strategies, concepts and practices on their production. They also apply the new technology called High Pressure Process (HPP) to short-circuit the ability of harmful microbes and bacteria to grow instead of pasteurization. HPP uses thousands of pounds of pressure per square inch to coconut water bottles in a water bath that evenly distributes the pressure. HPP is taking hold as a pasteurization technology that enhances food safety, keeps coconut water raw, and creates new products with superior taste and nutrition. This brand launched their first 100% raw and organic coconut water in August 2011, and it was so successful that the product went nationwide in October 2011. Afterward, a younger new brand, which has produced the same concept of product, sourced coconut water from the same country that the pioneer brand I mention above do sourcing, and also used HPP for food preservation, launched the new raw coconut water product to compete in 2013. The pioneer brand that introduced sustainable concept and HPP in coconut water preservation, however, steadily grows up nationwide in coconut water market share, while the younger new brand gradually increases in sales and marketing in the east coast of the U.S. The secret to the first pioneer raw coconut water producer’s success is the mind-set of quality management; two and a half years of hard researching and working with the scientists to find the best food preservation way and coconut water sources to create the best coconut water in the competitive market; a small team of employees who are hired because they really understand the concept of the company; and also building the relationship with farmers and their ecosystems for their long-term welfare as they work for the company.

In my opinion, understanding pros and cons of casual benchmarking is very important as a beginning step before making a decision. Most people are sometimes unconcerned with thinking deeply about what they need to do in their businesses, and only copy or follow the obvious visible concepts that the successful companies do. They have beliefs that if they borrow successful companies’ practices or business models, it will make their companies become successful too. This is not always true. Pfeffer and Sutton (2006) state that “even greater damage is done by beliefs that are partly right and apply at certain times, but when treated as completely true and applied in full force to every decision and every action, undermine performance, destroy management careers, and ruin employee well-being” (p. 25). Besides only imitating the most successful companies, there are many things that people have to pay attention to such as logic, analysis, experiments, practices, and peer-review and professional consensus. They are also necessary for management.

I do not think that we need to challenge implicitly this assumption of concept since the authors who wrote this concept have a strong argument and good examples to support the concept. Casual benchmarking is not the concept that the authors actually suggest for applying in management, however, this concept needs more evidence, studies, experiments, or even scientific literature review to make it more effective and cause no flaws to the organizations. I have one question that makes me keep thinking about this concept. I wonder how about some businesses that imitated the other companies’ performance and practices, but became successful. I could not think of any example now, but I guess there are some. What do you think about this issue?

The second most important concept that I think is also relevant to my field of study is from the online presentation by Dr. Rachel Chung, weekly discussion 1. This concept is called reliability or junk test. It is one of the applications of the scientific method, which is a part of evaluations of claims, tools, and procedures section. This is for testing the tools that we use to see if that tool or program is valuable. While I was listening the Dr. Chung’s lecture on slide 16, one of my research projects that I did in the Fall 2013 semester popped up in my head and I thought it could fit this concept that I am discussing. According to my research in the Food Access course, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the largest governmental hunger safety program in the U.S. and claims to be a program offering nutrition assistance to millions of eligible, low-income individuals and families, and provides economic benefits to communities. In my perspective, however, this program and its procedure are still inadequate and clearly not quite an efficient and/or cost effective way (or what we call “reliable tool”) to solve the hunger problem in the U.S. Why? -- According to Janet Poppendieck, a professor of sociology at Hunter College, City University of New York, the erosion of the value of public assistance was one of the forces that contributed hunger to the accelerating use of private organizations provided such as soup kitchens and food pantries (1995). Less complexity in the procedure to access food in private initiatives would make needy people get rid of hunger faster than waiting for an approval from the governmental entitlement programs. There are some critics against food stamps in some states that have made food stamps extremely difficult to obtain, for instance, requiring birth certificates of all household members, or requiring that participants have almost no assets such as, problematically, a relatively new car (Guptill, 2012). In addition, some studies claimed that food assistance programs did not provide sufficient assistance to those who could obtain a nutritional diet since food stamp participants are eligible to buy any nutrient-poor foods and sweetened drinks such as soda and chips. This conflicts with what the program claims that they offer: nutrition assistance. In my opinion, some nutrient-poor foods should not be allowed to be purchased with SNAP since these foods can lead people to be obese and the goal of the program is to help people with nutrition. Do you think SNAP needs a junk test to make it more valuable?

Reliability or junk test is one of the skills that is important to me. Every decision making process needs actual evidence to proof what it works or what it does not. Everybody does not want to make a wrong decision because it wastes our time, money, or even life (in medical treatment). This concept relates to the slide 18, “what is not scientific evidence”. Other seven factors that people mostly rely on and believe in for making a decision are: emotion, Ad Hominem (personal attacks), bandwagon effect, authority, genetic relations, anecdotes, and personal experience. People usually have a first belief in the recommendations that are based on these seven factors. Later, they might have thought that what they trust is not exactly right since they do not have reliable information. This can lead to failure. In general, not in management, I personally like to make a decision or believe in something which is based on authority and personal experience. I know that is not good, especially in running a business and management, so that’s why I think this concept is useful for me.

I have a random question about evaluating junk tests. If we have a limit of time in evaluating tools/programs, what is an alternative solution/test that we can do instead?  I do not think there are potentially negative consequences of applying junk tests in any particular issue. One thing that I am concerned about in using this concept is how and/or when people know to use it, but people do not want to hear the truth of the answer.

  
How to Run a Successful Organic Restaurant by Khalid Salaam from Inc.com

ORGANIC GREENS FROM EDEN HALL CAMPUS

FINGER FOOD FROM ONE SUCCESSFUL ORGANIC RESTAURANT IN PITTSBURGH

Khalid Salaam, a contributing editor and senior writer at SLAM Magazine, suggests 8 things to consider if you want to start an organic restaurant business. From eight things that he recommends, most of them are based on information that he obtained from other people’s experiences such as Sarma Melngailis, proprietor and co-founder of Pure Food & Wine, and some stories and advice from Amanda Cohen, owner and head chef of Dirt Candy, New York City's premier vegetarian restaurants. This advice is not based on scientific evidence and cannot validate his claims. However, he provides a few actual data from academic research to support his recommendations, for example, Salaam says “According to the Organic Trade Organization (OTA), organic food sales increased by 5.1 percent in 2009 as compared to conventional food sales, which only saw a 1.6 percent increase.” (2010) Salaam provides eight isolated cases, which are about the trends and movements in organic food industry, mentioned in his piece. The sample size that the author uses to make the arguments is a small group of organic food farmers and organic restaurant owners. To make these recommendations to be evidence-based, actual data is needed such as a table of average marketplace price of organic foods and conventional foods, results from academic studies, or field studies.

So far, after I have learned from all class materials in the first session, so many new things are both rewarding and challenging to me. The first week was a little bit tough since we had to set up a lot of technologies to help us communicate easier to the class. The lecture and the book Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense written by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton give me more sense about the fundamental of scientific method, scientific certified research, what is not scientific evidence, and evidence-based management, but still leave me some doubts such as how we can trust the evidence, or if the evidence-based management works for company A, but does not work with company B, which is the company that co-operates with company A, so what is the best solution? Current practices or evidence-based management? My questions might be answered in the week four session. It is also my group assignment topic. Anyway the book is easy to read. However, the reading, “How to evaluate psychological sciences for organizations” is more challenging. I reread it twice but it is still unclear to me. I have to read it again. In the next session, I hope I will have more sense in evidence-based management, especially for as individual. It would help me develop my own decision making either in life or work.   

References

Guptill, A. E. (2012). Food access: Surplus and scarcity. Food and Society: Principles and Paradoxes, 141-159.

Pfeffer, J. & Sutton, I. R. (2006). Hard facts: Dangerous half-truths, and total nonsense. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

Poppendieck, J. (1995). Hunger in America: Typification and response.  Eating Agendas: Food and Nutrition as Social Problems, 11-34.

Salaam, K. (2010). How to run a successful organic restaurant. Retrieved from http://www.inc.com/guides/2010/09/how-to-run-a-successful-organic-restarant.html