Evidence-Based Management and the Trustworthiness of Our Cumulative Scientific Knowledge: Implications for Teaching, Research, and Practice

The promise of evidence-based management (EBMgt) is that educators and practitioners can access cumulative scientific information to guide their teaching and decision making. We argue that the EBMgt movement may be unable to live up to this promise to the extent that our cumulative scientific knowledge is not trustworthy. We review why the management discipline may not have trustworthy evidence and how this widens the divide among educators, practitioners, and researchers. Next, we review the implications of untrustworthy cumulative knowledge, focusing on how educators can critically assess evidence and teach this process in the classroom. We close with recommendations for improving the trustworthiness of our literature to enhance teaching and practice from an evidence-based perspective. Suggestions include increasing the reproducibility and replication of primary studies, changing the editorial review process, and focusing on the production and dissemination of practically relevant and actionable knowledge.