Drivers and outcomes of engagement

I have a list of drivers of engagement and a list of outcomes of engagement, and sometimes they're the same. Or the way the authors write makes it difficult to distinguish between drivers and outcomes. I think drivers include:

• Trust, Commitment (Block, NAO 2006),
• Learning {Marcum}, Involvement {Marcum, Wenger}, Interest {Marcum}, Participation {Marcum, Axelrod, 2004},
• Dialogue {McMaster},
• Vigour, Dedication & Absorption {Schaufeli},
• Belonging, Being included, Negotiation Relations of mutuality Coming to the office {Wenger},
• Round tables {Block}
• Belief that people matter, Encourage collaboration, Foster participation, Create communities , Connect people, Embrace democracy {Axelrod, 2002}

I think I can combine these drivers with outcomes into a couple of dimensions:

• emergent knowledgeability
• communication

Then these various drivers and outcomes might make sense.

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.

Engagement

I know engagement is a good thing, but I'm not quite clear what it is:

• commitment
• participation
• involvement
• ?
  

If clients must engage with consultants, then what does engagement entail? Here's my comparison of understanding of engagement in the literature.

Category	Citation	Understanding	Comments
Government	.NAO, 2006	Departments lacked engagement with supplier & community Engagement should be both of people in the organisation and among the consultants. Engagement implies gaining enthusiasm and energy to see the project through to conclusion.	..
Government	.NAO, 2006	Engagement leads to commitment, and NAO 1. developed framework for building commitment & 2. made recommendations to improve engagement	..
Government	.NAO, 2006	Conflates senior level engagement and ‘intelligent client’.	thus implying the multi-headedness of the client
Government	.NAO, 2006	Engagement and collaborative relationships are referred to as if synonyms	..
Practitioner	.Czerniawska, 2006	.Argues that extent of engagement between clients and consultants determines the success of consulting projects but doesn’t define engagement.	..
Practitioner	Block, 2000	.Devotes a whole chapter to the term & recommends Axelrod	..
Practitioner	Axelrod, 2007	.Identifies that participation in the sense of compliance is not enough to be involved	.He distinguishes the term as requiring involvement.
Practitioner	.Axelrod, 2006 .	.Axelrod identifies an engagement gap between those who have initiated a project for change and everyone else. An engagement gap can widen between the groups. An ecumenical i.e. inclusive and collective approach, to change theory will narrow that gap.	.Follow up in project research
Academic	.Barki, 1989	.defined and examined user participation	..
Academic	.Barki, 1994 Hartwick, 1994	examined user participation and user involvement	..
Academic	Barki, 1989	.Barki and Hartwick defined user involvement as a psychological state when the user considers a system to be both important and personally relevant	..
Academic	.Hartwick, 1994	Hartwick and Barki talk about involvement “overall responsibility is the most important antecedent of user involvement and attitude toward the system”	..
Academic	Peled, 2001	Peled recommends that management develop interest in technological projects.	..
Academic	Biehl, 2007	.found that top management involvement and real commitment was a success factor in IS project development on big and complex projects	.Biehl refers to commitment as if synonymous with involvement but doesn’t define involvement
Academic	.Fincham, 2002 & 1999	.Fincham refers to engagement in and he uses it in a political context with reference to power games.	Not useful at the moment
Academic	Handley, 2007	.They note a differentiation between participation & engagement: “What seems to be required is a way of differentiating between participation and what Wenger calls ‘mere engagement in practice’ (Wenger, 1998: 75). A key assumption here seems to be that participation involves ‘hearts and minds’”.	This could be a useful section to work from.

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Axelrod, R. H. (2001) 'Why Change Management Needs Changing', Reflections, 2 (3), pp. 46-57. 732
Axelrod, R. H. (2007) 'How to Get Others Involved', Harvard Management Update, 12 (8), pp. 2-2. 743
Axelrod, R. H., Axelrod, E., Jacobs, R. W. and Beedon, J. (2006) 'Beat the Odds and Succeed in Organizational Change', Consulting to Management - C2M, 17 (2), pp. 6-9. 744
Barki, H. and Hartwick, J. (1989) 'Rethinking the Concept of User Involvement', MIS Quarterly, 13 (1), pp. 53-63. 757
Barki, H. and Hartwick, J. (1994) 'Measuring User Participation, User Involvement, and User Attitude', MIS Quarterly, 18 (1), pp. 59-82. 746
Biehl, M. (2007) 'SUCCESS FACTORS for Implementing Global Information Systems', Communications of the ACM, 50 (1), pp. 53-58. 700
Block, P. (2000) Flawless Consulting: a guide to getting your expertise used, (2 Edn), Jossey-Bass/Fpeiffer. 27
Czerniawska, F. (2006). Ensuring sustainable value from consultants. 49
Fincham, R. (1999) 'THE CONSULTANT-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP: CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE MANAGEMENT OF ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE', Journal of Management Studies, 36 (3), pp. 335-351. 522
Fincham, R. (2002) 'The Agent's Agent', International Studies of Management & Organization, 32 (4), pp. 67-86. 500
Handley, K., Clark, T., Fincham, R. and Sturdy, A. (2007) 'Researching Situated Learning', Management Learning, 38 (2), pp. 173-191. 458
Hartwick, J. and Barki, H. (1994) 'Explaining the Role of User Participation in Information System Use', Management Science, 40 (4), pp. 440-465. 749
NAO (2006a) Central Government's use of consultants Vol. HC 128 Session 2006-2007 National Audit Office. 577
NAO (2006b) Central Government's use of consultants: Building client and consultant commitment National Audit Office. 109
NAO (2006c) Delivering successful IT-enabled business change Vol. HC 33-1 National Audit Office. 682
NAO (2006d) Good governance: Measuring Success Through Collaborative Working Relationships HMSO. 818<

Value from consultants

Block's 2nd [1] edition says that on implementation

"the greatest service of the consultant may be to raise consciousness of the client about the value of engagement in the implementation process."

But getting that value from the consultant must depend on getting the value from engagement, and I don’t know what engagement is.

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[1] Block, P. (2000) Flawless Consulting: a guide to getting your expertise used, (2 Edn), Jossey-Bass/Fpeiffer. 27