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.