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personalquarterly 04 / 12
8
Schwerpunkt
_Interview
(i.e., the checklist, modeled on effective practices in the airline
industry).
PERSONALquarterly:
This is an impressive example for a country-
wide approach to implement practices based on EBMgt and
EBMed. Do you have other examples where such principles were
applied in single firms?
Sara Rynes:
There are other good examples, some single-case
studies and others based on either multiple cases or meta-
analyses (where data from many studies are combined into a
single analysis). In the case study genre, Gary Latham (2009)
describes how an evidence-based manager dramatically impro-
ved performance at “Woodlands,” a forest products company in
the United States. The manager began by employing a variety
of research-supported practices, such as: developing a vision
statement, conducting job analyses, changing the hiring sys-
tem to be more job-related, creating a behavior-based perfor-
mance evaluation system, coaching employees based on their
behavioral appraisals, and increasing employee motivation
through goal setting. Five years later, usage of raw materials,
lumber, and manhours per unit of production had all gone
down (25 %, 18 %, and 8 %, respectively), as did grievances,
work stoppages (from 28,000 total hours lost over five year to
0 hours lost), voluntary turnover (from 10.6 % to 5.6 %) and
absenteeism (from 3.9 % to 2.7 %). Employees’ job satisfaction
went up, as did their evaluations of supervisory performance.
Similarly, Frank Schmidt (2009) describes how more than 30
years ago, a Philip Morris plant that began implementing a bat-
tery of ability tests during hiring decisions obtained 35 % high-
er output from employees selected via ability tests versus those
not selected that way. Other improvements from ability testing
included 25 % fewer operator failures, 58 % fewer disciplinary
actions, a 35 % reduction in unsafe work behaviors, and an
82 % reduction in days lost due to accidents. Still, despite strong
meta-analytic evidence of higher performance as a result of
ability-based selection procedures (see Schmidt/Hunter, 1998),
ability tests are still not widely used among U.S. employers.
Another example that involves implementation of the same
evidence-based program by multiple companies was provided
by Pritchard/Herrell/DiazGranados/Guzman (2008). They stu-
died the results from 83 field studies that implemented the Pro-
ductivity and Measurement Enhancement System (ProMES).
ProMES is a productivity intervention that is implemented
through a series of steps: a design team first develops 4-6 de-
partment goals, and then 8-12 objective measures to indicate
how well those goals are being met. The units are then given
group feedback about how well objectives are being met, and
ideas are generated for improvement. This process is repeated
over and over again, in a cycle of continuous improvement.
Results showed that, on average, work unit productivity moved
from the 50th to the 88th percentile following ProMES imple-
mentation. This is a sizable effect! The authors also found that
the results were more positive when work units followed the
recommended protocol more closely.
PERSONALquarterly:
Most of these examples focus on the U.S. Do
you perceive any country differences in awareness or implemen-
tation of evidence-based principles in organizations, e.g., U.S.
vs. Germany?
Sara Rynes:
That’s a really great question. Unfortunately, I didn’t
really know the answer, so I posed the question to members of
the EBMgt Collaborative. Four individuals with some interna-
tional experience offered the following observations.
Two respondents suggested that they saw far more similarities
across countries than differences. One of these respondents,
a global HR consultant, said: “I’ve found that decision-makers
the world over are astonishingly capable of making decisions
based on anything but good evidence. I’ve observed this wor-
king (and in some cases living) in North and South America,
Africa, Middle East, Europe and Asia over the past 25 years.
Sadly, even when their decisions are informed by good, robust
evidence of what works, their organization may or may not act
based on this.”
However, two respondents thought that there might be some
international differences in whether or not managers respond
to EBMgt with curiosity and interest, versus defensiveness.
Those who had experienced defensive reactions suggested that
they might be more common in the U.S. and the U. K. than in
Continental Europe or countries in Africa, the Middle East, or
Asia. At the same time, however, two of the four felt that U.S.
companies were probably ahead of most of the rest in terms of
collecting local (i.e., company) evidence for decision making,
but not ahead in using academic research findings. But all
these comments were impressionistic rather than based on
systematic evidence, so this would be a good topic for future
investigation.
One thing that has been researched in a variety of countries
is whether the academic findings that are disbelieved by U.S.
practitioners are also disbelieved by practitioners in other
countries. The answer is that there are very strong similari-
ties across countries on most of these items: if U.S. managers
don’t believe a finding, managers in the Netherlands, Finland,
South Korea, Spain, and Australia are also likely not to believe
(Sanders et al., 2008; Tenhiälä et al., 2012). This goes back to
the notion that there are some general “types” of findings that
tend to be disliked on a broad scale.
PERSONALquarterly:
What can a manager do to get started in using
academic research or evidence-based management?
Sara Rynes:
This is an important question. There are two general
routes to beginning EBMgt: starting to collect relevant data in
your organization, and/or reading about evidence-based ma-