Why the public sector?

What motivates me to do research on the public sector is

“the conviction that government is given crucial work that society very much needs to have performed well”

(from a book review by Kelman in Academy of Management Review, 2008 April, page 564)

It's important that researchers look at public sector work to find how public sector workers do well what they do well. Such research should disseminate good practice, which is then of value to all of us, both as receivers of public services and as tax payers.

Czerniawska writing on independence says here

"in the public sector, organisations tend to be more concerned about the tied/independent distinction, driven by a combination of wanting to ensure fair and open competition and by a desire for oversight and governance."

It's the oversight and governance aspects that draw me to the public sector.

Prisoner's dilemma

In a well known game theory, two prisoners are separately interrogated. There’s insufficient evidence to convict them of serious misdemeanours so unless they confess they’ll get only a year’s imprisonment. But the prosecution offers a devious deal:

“Turn state evidence so we can lock up your partner for ten years and you’ll get off scot free.”

But there’s a hitch:

“If you both confess, we’ll lock you both up for six years.”

So there are four choices:
Czerniawska uses the model in her slide show of Storm Clouds Ahead, here.
The consultancy equivalent of the prisoner’s dilemma is that:

1. neither firm A nor firm B act so everyone loses
2. Firm A acts, firm B does not act, so firm A damages its own reputation and firm B freeloads on the action of others
3. Firm B acts, firm A does not act, so firm B damages its own reputation and firm A freeloads on the action of others
4. Firm A and firm B act so everyone wins

I don’t know what Czernaiwska said as she showed the slide so can only guess what she meant it to represent. Perhaps:

• Client and consultant working together or
  
• Two consultancy firms working on one client project

The point of the model is that collaboration is the best option.

However, it’s an overrated theory. To begin with the prisoners aren’t working blind. There’s nothing to stop them from conferring beforehand and agreeing to cooperate. But even if they did meet and agree to cooperate they could still stab each other after.

In a continued context, theory and computer models show collaboration works, which is what Robert Axelrod wrote about in his “the Evolution of Cooperation”. He represented cooperative situations using the iterated prisoner’s dilemma. In the prisoner’s dilemma the prisoners face their dilemma just the once, whereas in real life dilemmas tend to repeat so we might realise that our cooperation today might be an incentive for your cooperation tomorrow. Axelrod invited game theory experts to create computer programs to model the iterated prisoner’s dilemma to check this. The winner was tit-for–tat, which is the strategy of starting with cooperation and thereafter doing whatever the other player did on the previous move. Over time, infinity or no predetermined number of iterations, this tends this way to cooperate and therefore win-win. So it sounds like a suitable theory to model the consultant-client relationships that I’m looking at.

Unfortunately, if the prisoners know how many iterations there’ll be, say five, then on the 5th iteration, there’s not the incentive to cooperate, as you know it’s the end of the game, and so in that case, why cooperate on the fourth iteration either if you plan not to cooperate on the last? Or for that matter, why cooperation on the previous iteration – it’s called backwards induction and forces mutual defection. So the Prisoner’s Dilemma model has a number of flaws.

A possibly better model is the Stag Hunt. Rousseau proposed this game, which involves more than two collaborators with the task of chasing, hunting a stag. One person alone cannot catch the stag; it requires collaboration. However, individuals could go off and do their own thing, hunt rabbits, thereby ensuring a smaller prize.

Perhaps I should apply this model to clients and consultants on collaborative IT projects.

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

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.

Working hypotheses

In order to achieve effective project performance it is important that:

• clients and consultants engage with each other
• clients know what they want from the project
• clients know the terms of engagement even if the outcomes are uncertain
• consultants transfer knowledge to clients (depends on the project tho)
  

Assumptions

• engagement is a process
• engagement allows transfer of knowledge
  
• knowledge transfer is good
• knowledge transfer increases project value
• increased project value is necessary for a more effective project
  
• knowledge transfer is a requirement for an effective project (but may not be if this is for example, a one-off decision)
  
• knowledge is an undefined form of intellectual capital (it could depend on scope or type of communication or length of time required) {Czerniawska, 2002 #894})

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Czerniawska, F. (2002) The intelligent client: managing your management consultant, Hodder & Stoughton. 894

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<

Client engagement

Czerniawska argues that the extent of engagement among client-managers who work with consultants determines the success of consulting projects but she does not define engagement. Engagement may relate to reasons for using consultants. Reasons may be:

• people,
  
• process
  
• perspective
  
• politics

Management processes can improve the use of consultants, and hence the need for client management engagement with consultants. If clients must engage with consultants, then what does engagement entail?

UK government documents indicated the importance of top-level engagement and commitment [2,3,4,5]. The NAO report makes recommendations to improve engagement in consulting projects but does not distinguish types of client in public organisations.

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[1] Czerniawska, F. (2006). Ensuring sustainable value from consultants.
[2] Intellect. (2000). Getting IT Right for Government A Review of Public Sector IT Projects.
[3] Intellect. (2003). IT Supplier Code of Best Practice.
[4] NAO (2006) Central Government's use of consultants: Building client and consultant commitment National Audit Office.
[5] NAO (2006) Delivering successful IT-enabled business change Vol. HC 33-1 National Audit Office.