Truths, half-truths and misconceptions : an evidence-based evaluation of managers' beliefs about critical people management principles

Abstract

Decision-making is a crucial function within any organisation in that its integrity, reliability and efficiency are reliant on the daily conclusions made by the organisation's managers. Research brings about many changes in the way things are done and its evolution enriches decisionmaking methods which, in turn, achieve better results. The transition from making decisions based on bounded rationality to knowledge-based conclusions has progressed, as a substantial amount of information can now be found and implemented. This concept is still relatively unknown to many Managers and hence, this study aims to explore Managers' beliefs about People Management Principles in any field of work. The questionnaire was conducted utilising evidence-based Organisational Behaviour (OB) Principles. This tested the pattern of judgement of 72 managers and whether their conclusions were deviated by their unawareness of Evidence-Based knowledge, which underlies these principles. Thus, this study evaluated which OB Principles enable managers to make better decisions, and assessed whether managers’ intuitions are, in fact, evidence-based or not. Results hint at the plausibility that although some areas of OB might be intuitively correct, others like ‘Selection’ and ‘Organisational Processes’, are more based on biases. All managers somehow deal with OB, yet not all have a foundation in Human Resources: hence, a test for independence of the variable was required. This variable consisted of both participants having academic training or experience in HR and those who do not. Subsequently, once results were carefully assessed, a Chi-Squared Test was carried out to assess whether this variable is correlated. Ultimately, findings suggest that this variable was independent in most cases. The study has several implications, whereby organisations not only are not only subjected to various extra financial costs, but also miss out on potential alternatives, and thus, incur opportunity costs. It is recommended that at the place of work, systematic reviews and courses on Evidence-Based Management should be carried out.