Anna Shillabeer dedicates this book to her three sons, Callan, Declan, and Aydan.
Terry Buss dedicates this book to Thuy, Dan and Janet, Steve and Mary Ann, Sandy and Bill, Anna and Bronte, and Gwyneth and Laura.
First published 2011 by M.E. Sharpe
Published 2015 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Evidence-based public management : practices, issues, and prospects / edited by
Anna Shillabeer, Terry F. Buss, and Denise M. Rousseau.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 9780-765624208 (hardcover : alk. paper)ISBN 9780-765624222 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Public administrationDecision making. I. Shillabeer, Anna, 1970 II. Buss, Terry F. III. Rousseau, Denise M.
JF1525.D4E94 2011
352.33dc22 | 2010040047 |
ISBN 13: 9780765624222 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 9780765624208 (hbk)
Contents
Geoff Mulgan
Terry F. Buss and Anna Shillabeer
Terry F. Buss and Nathaniel J. Buss
David E. Cavazos and Roberto J. Cavazos
Ruth T. Zaplin and Don Blohowiak
Alan Lyles
Joshua Earl
Aaron Osterby and Robert Hanson
Terry F. Buss and Nathaniel J. Buss, with Evan Hill
NAPA Fellows and Staff
Nancy J. Kingsbury, Nancy Donovan, Judith A. Droitcour, and Stephanie L. Shipman
Kenneth J. Meier and Laurence J. OToole, Jr.
Edward T. Jennings, Jr. and Jeremy L. Hall
Paul Kearns
Denise de Vries
John M. Kamensky
Kathryn Newcomer and F. Stevens Redburn
Anna Shillabeer
Geoff Mulgan
This is a good moment to publish a collection on evidence-based management. In the United States, federal government is returning to a much greater interest in what works. In China, policy makers are looking for hard data in a system where it has been largely absent, and many other national governments are becoming more interested in formal evaluations. The World Bank has programs such as the Global Partnership on Output-Based Aid to tie money to evidence, while the World Health Organization promotes evidence-based health care and, beyond it, programs to promote health in all policies, drawing on the evidence showing just how much health comes from factors beyond the control of health services. Meanwhile, among the public, one effect of growing numbers passing through higher education is that there is an extraordinary hunger for explanation, whether to make sense of what worked and what did not work in economic policy or in relation to public health.
These all explain the burgeoning interest in the different forms of evidencebased activity, from evidence-based practice (which is generally associated with the professions), to evidence-based policy (generally meaning governments) and evidence-based management (which could potentially cover much of the daily work of guiding organizations to achieve better results).
But as this book adroitly demonstrates, these different activities are rarely straightforward. Many of the dilemmas posed by different kinds of knowledge are not in themselves new. Decision makers, at least some of them, have throughout history wanted to base their decisions on knowledge and evidence. Builders of irrigation systems and city walls, monetary systems and public health, have always wanted to rely on more than guesswork or anecdote. Yet all have struggled with the ambiguities of knowledge, the risks of relying on authoritative experts whose knowledge might turn out to be obsolete or the peril of finding that what works in one place may not in another. Although the sheer volume of formal evidence available to governments puts us in a quite different context, dilemmas set out in this book are not so different.
For all that, however, we probably have a clearer ideal of evidence-based activity than did any previous generation. First there is the accumulation of insight and evidence from social scientists, studying patterns, correlations, and causes. Then a policy or practice is designed, and piloted, with a randomized control trial to judge whether it really works. Then over time the policy or program is extended, with continuous improvement and testing on the margins, with managers and decision makers scrupulously supporting whatever has the strongest evidence behind it.
This ideal, derived in part from medicine, is inherently appealing for many. It appears to dissolve away the confusions of ideology and assumption, turning the blunt incompetence of much government into something more like surgical precision. Fortunately, too, there are indeed examples of this kind of evidence-based policy, including some labor-market policies and some policies for research and development and for supporting children or managing environments.
But each of the words evidence and based turns out to be somewhat less reliable than might be assumed. President Obamas former economic adviser, Larry Summers, once said that the laws of economics are universal. But in fact all social knowledge, including economics, turns out to be contextual, or at least limited in its applicability across time and space. Indeed it is hard to think of a single law in social science (even such apparently firm laws as the one that says demand falls when prices rise turns out to have counterexamples). Part of the reason is of course that all human knowledge is reflexive: any new knowledge becomes part of the environment it is trying to understand. So even the most perfectly judged intervention, which works well for a time, may before long become obsolete.
Then there is the question of what counts as evidence. Randomized control trials are generally seen as the gold standard for evidence. They certainly bring rigor and clarity, and they have helped to solidify knowledge on issues ranging from lung cancer to food and life expectancy to parenting programs and mental health. But they are not a panacea. Some randomized control trials have subsequently been overturned, including some that have been very influential in policy making. A recent survey from the medical field looking at what counts as evidence provided a useful warning to people working in other fields who look to medicine as the pinnacle of certainty. It showed many examples of apparently solid evidence that had been subsequently challenged or overturned, and its main conclusion was that it is wise to say that
