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.

---

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?

---

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?
   

---

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

---

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?

---

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.