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.