Why should managers read research?

Why should managers read research?   There has been much talk about the `two cultures’ of management and research – the one focused on today’s pressing problems and pragmatic solutions, the other presenting 200 page reports hedged with qualification and abstraction some years after the first question was posed.  Initiatives have been set up to try to bridge the gap – providing `good enough’ research to inform decisions by managers, whether reconfiguring local maternity care or decommissioning inpatient addiction services.  There is no doubt that managers and researchers inhabit different worlds.  But management without research is anecdote.   And research without use is archive.

In making the case for research, we often stress its instrumental importance – providing hard evidence of the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of care.  This is important – but what has struck me is the power of research to change the way you think as well as what you do.  When I recently asked a `research-friendly’ trust chief executive what research had most influenced him, he mentioned works on theories of leadership and organisational culture, as well as shifting care out of hospital.   The best research can illuminate, provoke and challenge – as well as inform.  

What follows are a personal selection of papers which I think (for different reasons) arelikely to become modern classics.   In separate blogs, I have extracted the key findings for each, with a personal commentary and sense of what they add to what is already known – plus a cheeky one-line summary for those who really don’t have time for more.  There are a range of methods – from a systematic review of trials to a five-year ethnographic study of one practice.  These include:

Mary Dixon-Woods’ theory-rich evaluation of a major patient safety intervention http://taralamont.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/why-change-can-be-hardest-word-of-all.html

John Gabbay and Andree Le May’s deep study of a practice to explore how doctors use evidence http://taralamont.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/what-doctors-really-do-and-why.html;

Sasha Shepperd’s systematic review of hospital at home schemes http://taralamont.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/as-well-as-or-instead-of-beds-evidence.html

At the Health Service Research Network symposium in Manchester this week, we heard from the likes of Mike Cooke and Liz Mear why all trusts – not just the biomedical beacons – want to engage with research and the new opportunities opening up with AHSNs.  Every trust is now asked for metrics on recruiting patients to trials – and there may be real incentives at a time of pressure in building up research capacity to attract new funds.  But for managers there are also personal rewards in taking the time to read more widely.  Each of these pieces of research are important but also a pleasure to read.  Today’s managers are asked to flex their thinking muscles as never before, to think critically about what we do now and what could be done tomorrow.   This may be a good place to start.