This paper explores the contested meaning of ‘employee engagement’ within the context of public service agencies. While psychologists have researched engagement for nearly 20 years (Truss et al 2014); the concept has only more recently become a topic of interest for HRM scholars. “Engagement” was ‘initially conceptualised’ by scholars as a particular ‘state of mind’. Kahn’s (1990) pioneering seminal work challenged this by exploring working conditions leading to workers becoming personally engaged. It is his emphasis on the individual – the ‘human’ that this paper focuses on.
Kahn’s (1990) study is important to revisit as it provides a depiction of critical characteristics of and antecedents to employee engagement. First, the main focus of the study was on psychological conditions, thus Kahn drew extensively on the positive psychology school from which the concept emerged. Second, these positive psychological conditions were noted as not static, but fleeting in that “if certain conditions are met to some acceptable degree, people can personally engage in moments of task behaviours” (p. 703, emphasis added). The focus of the study was therefore on how employee experiences of both themselves and their workplaces influenced ‘moments of personal engagement and disengagement’.
The concept’s founding principles in positive psychology have become mired by an increasingly myopic focus on organisational engagement and its relationship to organisational performance. This paper’s focus is on putting the ‘self’ back into engagement. This might take the form of humanity entailed in the professional-client relationship (e.g. doctor – patient) but caution is required in such an approach, as engaged professionals have been seen to contribute to ‘contextual resilience’ (Akgun & Keskin 2014), i.e. compensating for the lack of resources or direction through which to meet or overcome organisational risk. While contextual resilience is good news for service users in the public sector, it can however pose real dangers to professionalism and to long-term public service sustaintability. It also challenges the notion of engagement to the organisation, where professionals have greater engagement to their 'profession' and their 'clients'.
This study utilises the context of the public sector to explore Employee Engagement, as the authors argue that it is here that the needs of individuals and the contribution of Employee Engagement are particularly challenged, given the current environment of austerity, uncertainty and political instability across the global public sector. These challenges are explored through secondary and primary research. The former has involved an extensive literature and policy review. Whilst the latter has involved the various authors collaborating to share t findings from their respective qualitative and/or quantitative studies in various public service settings e.g. healthcare, social work, and police, and in different countries including the UK, Europe, and Australia.
Organisational change and the organisation of public sector work
