Evidence-based management (also known as EBM or EMBgt) is a management approach that involves using multiple sources of scientific evidence and empirical results as a means of attaining knowledge (Barends, Rousseau, & Briner, 2014). To be an evidence-based manager is to use the scientific literature as a means of answering questions, inspiring strategy decisions, and forming long-term plans. Published academic research from the fields of psychology, behavioral economics, communications, and even sociology can help to inform the decisions of a well-informed evidence-based manager. An evidence-based manager carefully considers the body of evidence, evaluating research for its quality and relevance.
The consulting industry is currently undergoing a radical change. Traditional strategy, restructuring, and implementation consulting agencies are more and more under pressure. The causes are manifold and can be anything from not meeting client requirements to new scientific findings and easier access to current knowledge via the internet. Alternative consulting approaches are focusing on the traditional consulting model’s weaknesses and become more and more important. We summarized four reasons for a reorientation of traditional consulting agencies.
Management without goals? Impossible, if you believe the large number of popular science and specialized books about management topics. Goals, target agreements, and bonus systems connected to target achievement are all part of every manager’s toolbox.
Diversity, and the need to productively diversify, presents ongoing dilemmas in the professional world. Numerous fields that were previously relatively homogenous are slowly achieving greater parity in terms of race, gender, disability status, and other sources of distinct experience (Bijak et al, 2007). As organizations change in their demographic composition, a variety of growing pains can occur. This is particularly the case in organizations that have not prepared or adjusted for their changing workforce and its needs.
There is a growing need among managers to understand issues concerning organisational job satisfaction. It is quite tempting to regard job satisfaction as simply being ‘happy’ at work, but this topic is slightly more complex than we would normally expect. Let us start by defining job satisfaction and look into what it involves. One of the most common definitions for job satisfaction came out in 1976 from an American psychologist named Edwin Locke. As he put, it is simply “a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences”. In other words, workers draw on their perceptions and emotions to evaluate jobs in some degree of favour or disfavour.
Concepts like efficiency vs. creativity or stability vs. flexibility are deeply engraved in our vocabulary as opposites rather than synergies. A similar contrast is the distinction between startups and companies. While startups amid current debates about disruptive innovations, digitalization, and industry 4.0 are generally associated with speed and agility, terms like bureaucracy and heaviness come to mind when we are thinking about companies
I attended an instructor led leadership training session a couple of weeks ago. The training was well-organized, the training material of good quality and the trainers applied various training methodologies such as presentation sessions and interactive group work activities. However, there was one thing that really struck me.
Leaders within organizations are tasked with taking time to know what burnout is, how to identify it, how to prevent it, and how to address it if it spotted. It may seem like that is a personal matter for the employee to tend to, however, there is evidence to the contrary. Organizations are, at the core, made up of people. Not taking care of them is like neglecting any process or element of the business. If you don’t address this problem which may be lurking in your workplace, it could cost the company capital, both human and financial.
We have already arrived there. Long lost are the days where achievement, wealth, and position relied solely on an individual, or entity’s, capacity to rival against another to obtain the optimum available resources for themselves. Such an orientation primarily defined material success in the industrial and post-industrial eras and had its remnants extended into the beginning of the 21st century. It served its purpose in the frame of reference of the predominant capitalist’s value-system that prevailed in societies. But as we already entered the knowledge economy, recognized by its rapid technological advances, globalization, and extended communications networking and infrastructure, we cannot help to become increasingly aware of rapidly changing trends that kick dust in the eyes of the rat-race that once was.
Money makes the world go round? No way. Motivation makes the world go round! Motivation is an invisible force hidden in every single one of us. It’s the fire in us that determines our actions and decides where we invest our time and energy. We are motivated to a greater or a lesser extent depending on our respective daily condition, the environment, and interests. At times of high motivation, even difficult tasks can be a piece of cake and we are able to achieve incredible things. What’s behind the motivation mechanism? How can we increase motivation based on scientifically substantiated findings? We will get to the bottom of these questions in our current blog.
