Be critical

Association is not the same as causation

The fact that an organizational outcome is associated with an intervention does not mean that the intervention caused the outcome.

Just because an intervention is associated with a change (increase or decrease) in a certain organizational outcome, that doesn’t mean that the intervention caused this change.

The association or correlation could instead be due to chance or some other underlying factor. For example, organisations that implement a new management model may have more resources or may have better skilled workers than those who do not implement the new model. Therefore, organisations that implement the new model might appear to benefit from the model, but the difference in outcomes could have simply occured because they have more resources and better skilled workers.

BEWARE

Do not assume that an outcome was caused by an intervention unless other reasons for an association have been ruled out by a fair comparison.