What's the Evidence on Evidence-Based Management?

In this article, we respond to recent calls for increased use of evidence-based management (EBMgt) by conducting a systematic review of the literature to answer the following questions: (1) Is there a substantial literature concerning the concept of evidence-based management? (2) What is the quality of evidence (where it exists) regarding evidence-based management? and (3) Is there evidence that employing evidence-based management will improve organizational performance? We applied an assessment rubric based on ranking systems developed in evidence-based medicine to evaluate the strength of evidence. We found that a large number of articles are published on the topic, but most provide encouragement to adopt EBMgt based on opinion and anecdotal information. We call for increased research to generate stronger evidence related to the impact of EBMgt on organizational performance.