How managerial evidence use relates to employee perceptions of leadership

Purpose: This research establishes a measure of perception of supervisor evidence use and investigates relationships between those perceptions and other important workplace relationships.
Design/Methodology: The perceptions of evidence use scale was tested in multiple contexts, demonstrating excellent test-retest reliability and discriminant validity with leadership (MLQ, LMX), organizational justice and perceived organizational support.
Results: Structural equation modelling used the eight item, single factor scale which demonstrated important relationships with trust in supervisor, workplace learning, psychological distress and perceptions of organizational quality.
Limitations: Despite longitudinal scale development design, the cross sectional hypothesized model limits causality interpretation.
Research/Practical Implications: Evidence use’s relatively large contributions to both LMX and trust in leader suggest an opportunity to rethink leadership theory, particularly effective leadership and behaviors that good leaders manifest. How information-rich leaders use scientific evidence and organizational data may now be a source of important leader qualities in itself.
Originality/Value: The evidence-based management construct introduces a new dimension to leadership research and practice. As a mode of management practice with implications for both workplace relationships and learning, evidence-based management introduces the quality of decision making information and leader efforts to generate evidence via experimentation as important dimensions of leader behavior and contributors to leader-member relationships.