Why the public sector?

A new report on the market for public services, commissioned from Oxford Economics by the CBI, demonstrates the growth of the public services industry in the UK. Government procurement of services in seven key sectors is now worth £44bn. Providers in this market generate £25bn in added value and employ over 700,000 people, making the industry bigger than the pharmaceutical and automotive industries combined. Surely such a big market is of interest for researchers. Surely, since it's public money that provides these services, media and stakeholders and politicians must demand transparency and accountability for the expenditure, so any research into how that money is spent on services must help improve transparency.

Human centred computing

A Human-Centred Computing seminar today was a dry run of Yvonne Roger's keynote to be presented at the HCI 2008 conference.

The covering email read:

New Horizons for HCI

"HCI is experiencing a renaissance. No longer only about being user-centred, it has set its sights on pastures new, embracing a much broader and far-reaching set of interests. From emotional, eco-friendly, embodied experiences to context, constructivism and culture, HCI is changing apace: from what it looks at, the lenses it uses and what it has to offer. At the same time, new technologies are proliferating and transforming how we live our lives, for example, significant growth in techno-dependency and hyper- connectivity. As a result of these changes, HCI researchers and practitioners are facing a congeries of concerns that can be overwhelming. In my talk, I discuss how a different way of thinking is needed to help manage and make sense of the multiple perspectives, challenges and issues that increasingly define HCI."

I'd not had anything to do with the seminar series before, but am interested in such technology. Yvonne Rogers seemed to be talking beyond usability or ease of use but was addressing social aspects, ethics and value laden decisions. She had a great book to share with us, called 'Being Human', which is a report. You can find out more about it here and the BBC reviews it here.

Measurements of engagement

Measurements of engagement:

1. assume engagement exists
2. is important to have

Saks {, 2006} researched employee engagement, distinguishing between organisational and job engagement. It is a useful review of the literature. For example:

Kahn (1990, p. 694) defines personal engagement as “the harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances.”

Rothbard (2001, p. 656) also defines engagement as psychological presence but goes further to state that it involves two critical components: attention and absorption

Burnout researchers define engagement as the opposite or positive antithesis of burnout (Maslach et al., 2001).

Schaufeli et al. (2002, p. 74) define engagement “as a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption.”

Robinson et al. (2004, p. 8) state that: ". . . engagement contains many of the elements of both commitment and OCB, but is by no means a perfect match with either."

Then Saks states:

"Engagement is not an attitude; it is the degree to which an individual is attentive and absorbed in the performance of their roles."

A degree implies that there is some that can be measured. Saks measured using social exchange theory (SET) as his framework. But he writes that SET provides a theoretical foundation to explain why employees choose to become engaged. (So he's not answering my question of how).



Saks created hypotheses from the components of this diagram, then used questions with answers based on the Likert scale.

Schaufeli {2006} developed a questionnaire to measure work engagement, defining it as:

"Work engagement is defined as a positive, fulfilling work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption."

To me, that doesn't say that you can measure a state of mind, but Schaufeli's questionnaire measured the factors of vigor, dedication and absorption. He concluded that the results showed that "work engagement may be conceived as the positive antipode of burnout" and that his questionnaire could be used in studies of organisational behaviour. But his research doesn't tell me how people engage with each other or how engagement adds value.

It seems funny that you can measure some behaviour without knowing how you do that behaviour.

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Saks, A. M. (2006) 'Antecedents and consequences of employee engagement', Journal of Managerial Psychology, 21 (7), pp. 600-619. 938
Schaufeli, W. B., Bakker, A. B. and Salanova, M. (2006) 'The Measurement of Work Engagement With a Short Questionnaire: A Cross-National Study', Educational & Psychological Measurement, 66 (4), pp. 701-716. 835

Inconsistencies

Engagement brings value to a project and a consultant wants one project to lead to the contract so the value to the consultant must be that engagement must lead to the next contract. That motivates the consultant.

BUT motivation is manipulation, not engagement, according to Marcum {Marcum, 1999 #875}
So value (for a consultant) is inconsistent with engagement. A consultant cannot get value out of engagement.

My brain is in a muddle. What's the relationship of engagement and value? Does engagement add value or is it just a buzz word? If it adds value, then does it add value for both client and consultant?

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Marcum, J. W. (1999) 'Out With Motivation, in With Engagement', National Productivity Review (Wiley), 18 (4), pp. 43-46. 875

Puzzle

1. How does the public sector engage when the NAO exhorts it, if the NAO also says to use incentives. Incentives motivate, but motivation is not engagement {Marcum, 1999}.
2. How does engagement add value?
3. How does engagement benefit the consultant?
   

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Marcum, J. W. (1999) 'Out With Motivation, in With Engagement', National Productivity Review (Wiley), 18 (4), pp. 43-46. 875

Government life cycles

Government requires a classical project life cycle for systems development I've read somewhere, but where?

The NAO assumes a life cycle with Gateway reviews at stages: strategic assessment, business justification, procurement strategy, investment decision, and readiness for service, and benefits evaluation, which is repeated as required (NAO, 2004: 27). It insists on Gateway scrutiny early in the IT procurement lifecycle.

The NAO document is slightly confusing because it refers to:

• product life cycle (NAO, 2004: 27),
  
• project life cycle (NAO, 2004: 12, 14) and
  
• procurement life cycle (NAO, 2004: 20),
  

without clearly distinguishing between them. I wonder if the authors knew what they meant

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NAO (2004) Improving IT procurement: the impact of the Office of Government Commerce’s initiatives on departments and suppliers in the delivery of major IT-enabled projects Vol. HC 877 HMSO. 728

Engagement undefined

Definitions of engagement are woolly and soft. People don’t say what it is but they work around it.

For Axelrod engagement is a “paradigm for change” (Axelrod, 2001)
For Block engagement is “the art of bringing people together” (Block, 2000)
For Buckingham it is “a journey of sensing and learning” (Buckingham, 2005)
For the NAO, engagement is “a critical element of a consulting project” (NAO, 2006)
For Robinson, engagement is a two way relationship between employee and employer (Robinson D, 2004).
For Smythe it is a management philosophy (Smythe, 2007).
For McMaster it is a “process of communication” (McMaster, 1996)
For Wenger, mutual engagement is a dimension of a community of practice that involves processes of community building (Wenger, 1998)

So engagement is:

• A paradigm
• A journey
• An element
• A relationship
• A philosophy
• A process
• A dimension
• An art

Can I reconcile all these metaphors?

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AXELROD, R. H. (2001) Terms of engagement: changing the way we change organizations, San Francisco, Berrett-Koehler.
BLOCK, P. (2000) Flawless Consulting: a guide to getting your expertise used, Jossey-Bass/Fpeiffer.
BUCKINGHAM, M. (2005) Chapter FOUR: 'Buy-in', not by-pass: the rules of engagement. Leadership for Leaders. Thorogood Publishing Ltd.
MCMASTER, M. D. (1996) The Intelligence Advantage: organizing for complexity, Butterworth-Heinemann.
NAO (2006) Central Government's use of consultants: Building client and consultant commitment. National Audit Office.
ROBINSON D, P. S., HAYDAY S (2004) The Drivers of Employee Engagement. Institute for Employment Studies.
SMYTHE, J. (2007) The CEO chief engagement officer: turning hierarchy upside down to drive performance, Gower.
WENGER, E. (1998) Communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Why it is worthwhile to answer my question

How does engagement increase value of consultancy projects?

If

• Engagement adds value
• Projects succeed because of engagement
• Human capital is good
• Intellectual capital is increased

Then
We know engagement is worth while, worth having, worth creating, worth doing, worth further research. But that is about a different question - does engagement add value? Engagement could provide collaborative advantage {Huxham, 1993 #838}. If it does, then is engagement worthwhile? I assume that if engagement adds value, then it is worthwhile. But what about the question of how engagement adds value?

220,000 people work in the UK consulting industry. How do they add value to UK business and in particular to the UK public sector that provides 29% of the consulting market? The intelligent client {Czerniawska, 2002 #894}who knows how to engage with consultants gains the value. So how does an intelligent public sector client engage with consultants?

The research isn’t there to tell us.

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Czerniawska, F. (2002) The intelligent client: managing your management consultant, Hodder & Stoughton. 894
Huxham, C. (1993) 'Pursuing Collaborative Advantage', The Journal of the Operational Research Society, 44 (6), pp. 599-611. 838

Commitment

How does commitment differ from engagement?

Organisational commitment refers to a person's attitude and attachment to their organisation {Saks, 2006}. The NAO requires engagement in order to obtain commitment {NAO, 2006 #109}, which implies that a consequence of engagement is commitment yet I'd have thought they were the same thing.

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NAO (2006) Central Government's use of consultants: Building client and consultant commitment. National Audit Office.
SAKS, A. M. (2006) Antecedents and consequences of employee engagement. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 21, 600-619.

Motivation

Motivation

• seeks to cause action so triggers activity
• is manipulative
• incidental activity
  
• has been replaced by latest buzz word 'engagement'{Marcum, 1999}

The Marcum paper is interesting because it identifies problems with motivation (paternalistic, manipulative, employees not partners) and needing replacing. Marcum suggests engagement theory might replace the concept.

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MARCUM, J. W. (1999) Out With Motivation, in With Engagement. National Productivity Review (Wiley), 18, 43-46.

Life

Sometimes life gets in the way of pursuing research.

Over a year ago we students were to pose for a photo for the OUBS research students' web page. I should have been in that photo, but daughter collapsed at breakfast and we both went off to hospital in an ambulance. Loads of tests later, we got told that she had low blood pressure. However, she kept collapsing at taekwondo so went back to the doctor. Now she's got a diagnosis of hyperthyroidism.

I had thought that my interruptions would be through elderly relatives being ill, not my teenage daughter.

But we all have some such problem:

• a colleague has a wife with heart problems,
  
• another's mother has just recovered from dengue fever
  
• others struggle with their marriage
  

Others will have problems but just won't have mentioned them. It's not anything to do with doing a PhD that brings the problems, just life.

Collaboration

Perhaps collaboration is the same as engagement.

• it is interchangeable with cooperation {Huxham, 1993} and means "something to do with working together". Huxham introduces the concept of "collaborative advantage" to solve problems together
  
• "strong collaborative relationships go hand in hand with good project performance" {NAO, 2006}

Shaffer {Schaffer, 2002: 55} indicates that under the traditional consulting paradigm, consultants do not agree to collaborate. That sounds like avoiding engagement, and engagement is the same as collaboration.

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HUXHAM, C. (1993) Pursuing Collaborative Advantage. The Journal of the Operational Research Society, 44, 599-611.
NAO (2006) Good governance: Measuring Success Through Collaborative Working Relationships. National Audit Office.
SCHAFFER, R. H. (2002) High Impact Consulting, Jossey-Bass.

Involvement

How does involvement differ from engagement?

• involvement often refers to user participation in a systems development process
  
• is distinguished from participation, being a separate construct that refers to a psychological state (Barki, 1989 : 53)
• is an intervening variable between user participation and system use (Hartwick, 1994) (which seems a bit like engagement being the intermediate variable between website drivers and consumer behaviour in Mollen's MRes dissertation)
• job involvement has to do with self image and how employees employ themselves in the performance of their job (Saks, 2006: 602)
• managers can be "a priori involved" or "inquiry involved" (Swanson, 1974) depending on whether they make queries about using a system or whether they initiate changes. Activities that make a change possible sound a bit like engagement to me.
• "working with others to get things done" {Axelrod, 2004 :xi} written after Axelrod's book on engagement makes it sound like Axelrod thinks engagement and involvement are the same.
  

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AXELROD, R. H., AXELROD, E., BEEDON, J. & JACOBS, C. D. (2004) You don't have to do it alone: how to involve others to get things done, San Francisco, Berrett-Koehler.
BARKI, H. & HARTWICK, J. (1989) Rethinking the Concept of User Involvement. MIS Quarterly, 13, 53-63.
HARTWICK, J. & BARKI, H. (1994) Explaining the Role of User Participation in Information System Use. Management Science, 40, 440-465.
SAKS, A. M. (2006) Antecedents and consequences of employee engagement. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 21, 600-619.
SWANSON, E. B. (1974) MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS: APPRECIATION AND INVOLVEMENT. Management Science, 21, 178-188.

Participation

I'm trying to distinguish between engagement and other concepts like participation.

• user participation for developing and testing IT projects
• dimensions of participation are: responsibility, hands-on activities, user-IS relationships (Barki and Hartwick, 1994 :423)
• "a set of behaviours or activities performed by users in the system development process" (Barki and Hartwick, 1989)
• increases bureaucracy {Axelrod, 2001}
  
• involves hearts and minds (Handley et al., 2007)
• leads to involvement (Hartwick and Barki, 1994)
• refers to a process of taking part and to the relationship with others that reflects the process, i.e. both action and connection, reserved for actors who are members of social communities (p56). It is not collaboration. It is a constituent of meaning so is broader than engagement. (Wenger, 1998)

Now that last point by Wenger, does sound important. Engagement is a sub-set of participation, whereas I'd been thinking of participation as something specialised, that meant users of systems had to participate (because management said so) but that management didn't do. Wenger's point concurs with Mike Hales findings that participation in design can work, but that strategic management has to do something too.

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AXELROD, R. H. (2001) Terms of engagement: changing the way we change organizations. Journal for Quality & Participation, 24, 22.
BARKI, H. & HARTWICK, J. (1989) Rethinking the Concept of User Involvement. MIS Quarterly, 13, 53-63.
BARKI, H. & HARTWICK, J. (1994) Measuring User Participation, User Involvement, and User Attitude. MIS Quarterly, 18, 59-82.
HALES, M. (1993) User participation in design - what it can deliver, what it can't and what this means for management. IN QUINTAS, P. (Ed.) Social dimensions of systems engineering: people, processes, policies and software development. Horwood.
HANDLEY, K., CLARK, T., FINCHAM, R. & STURDY, A. (2007) Researching Situated Learning. Management Learning, 38, 173-191.
HARTWICK, J. & BARKI, H. (1994) Explaining the Role of User Participation in Information System Use. Management Science, 40, 440-465.
WENGER, E. (1998) Communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Gravy and custard

This mix of people creates gravy; that mix creates custard. Despite similar ingredients (fat and flour) the slight differences (butter vs lard, marmite vs sugar) produces a different product at the end of the process.

So, if you have two teams of people what you create are two different products.

What happens when you put two teams together - the gravy makers and the custard makers? That's the situation when you put in a team of consultants on a project with a team of clients: two different cultures, different products normally produced. So how do such teams work together to make a meal?

The NAO says senior managers must engage with the consultants. How do senior managers do it?

Assumptions about knowledge

• Knowledge transfer is good
• Knowledge transfer happens when people engage
• Knowledge transfer is a requirement for an effective project, assuming that is is more than a one-off decision.
• Knowledge is an undefined form of intellectual capital. It could be a discrete focused subject (Czerniawska, 2002 p91) or one-off or needing updating, or something people will read: scope, type of communication, length of time required. See Czerniawska's figure: the 3 dimensions of access to intellectual capital
• Knowledge is an aspect of uncertainty along with power, but central to management and consultancy (Fincham, 2002)
• "notion of “knowledge transfer” represents the main prescriptive definition of consultancy." (Fincham, 2002: 70)
• asymmetrical between management and consultant
• constructed by some process
• embodied in some expertise
• disseminated somehow

So sometimes I'm assuming and sometimes I can find some academic (like Fincham) who's mentioned aspects of knowledge.

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Czerniawska, F. (2002) The intelligent client: managing your management consultant, Hodder & Stoughton.
FINCHAM, R. (2002) The Agent's Agent. International Studies of Management & Organization, 32, 67-86.

No hypotheses

I can't have hypotheses without knowing what my research question is. Perhaps if I can surface my hypotheses, then I'll be clearer about my research question. Or is it the other way round?

A thesis needs hypotheses - see the PhD comic on the plural of thesis.

Assumptions about engagement

I'm assuming that the unit of analysis is the project. Why is it the project, because if it's the project is there a problem with the project? Is there a problem with IT projects in the public sector? And if there is a problem why does engagement have anything to do with the problem?

• The NAO report (NAO, 2006) assumes that engagement is a good thing.
• I'm assuming engagement is a process.
• I'm assuming engagement is not a widely recognised management construct.
• I am assuming one kind of engagement exists. Or does it vary depending on something? What? Perhaps it's its quality that varies. I note that the quality of engagement requires: reciprocity, shared decision making, a high level of interest, and is action for something worth doing.

But some studies measure engagement, such as the IES. Though I don't have free access to its reports its summary defines engagement:

"a positive attitude held by the employee towards the organization and its values"

I'm not sure that the NAO writers meant the same thing. The IES survey used a diagnostic tool that ranged from training & development to job satisfaction, which to me sounds like motivation and motivating factors {Marcum, 1999}, so something other than engagment. And I don't think the NAO would measure its senior responsible owners engagement on the same characteristics as the IES uses.

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NAO (2006) Central Government's use of consultants: Building client and consultant commitment National Audit Office
Marcum, J. W. (1999) 'Out With Motivation, in With Engagement', National Productivity Review (Wiley), 18 (4), pp. 43-46.