Post your analysis of three aspects of motivation

Context matters: examining ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ approaches to employee engagement in two workplaces

Sarah Jenkins* and Rick Delbridge

Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

This paper reports different managerial approaches to engaging employees in two contrasting organizations. We categorize these approaches to employee engagement as ‘hard’ and ‘soft’, and examine how these reflect the different external contexts in which management operate and, in particular, their influence on management’s ability to promote a supportive internal context. The paper extends the existing literature on the antecedents of engagement by illustrating the importance of combining practitioner concerns about the role and practice of managers with the insights derived from the psychological literature relating to job features. We build from these two approaches to include important features of organizational context to examine the tensions and constraints management encounter in promoting engagement. Our analysis draws on the critical organizational and HRM literature to make a contribution to understanding different applications of employee engagement within organizations. In so doing, we outline a situated and critical reading of organizations to better appreciate that management practices are complex, contested, emergent, locally enacted and context specific, and thereby provide new insights into the inherent challenges of delivering engaged employees.

Keywords: contextual contingencies; critical HRM; drivers of engagement; employee engagement; ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ management approaches to engagement

Introduction

This paper presents a qualitative study of two contrasting organizational cases to examine

and explain different management approaches to engaging employees. Our research

demonstrates how contextual contingencies enable or impede management’s ability to

deliver employee engagement. To assess this, we borrow from the early HRM research

(Storey 1989) to distinguish between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ management approaches to

employee engagement. VoiceTel embodied a ‘soft approach’ to employee engagement –

this centred on promoting positive workplace conditions and relationships between

management and employees, designing work and forging a work environment which was

conducive to promoting employee engagement; enhanced individual employee

productivity was not the primary focus or purpose. In stark contrast, EnergyServ adopted

‘hard’ engagement – this refers to the explicit objective of gaining competitive advantage

through increased employee productivity wherein employee engagement aims to directly

increase employee effort to improve organizational performance. Employee responses

were also very different – VoiceTel’s employees reported high levels of engagement, in

contrast, at EnergyServ, despite senior management’s commitment to, and prioritizing of,

employee engagement, high levels of employee disengagement were evident. Therefore,

q 2013 Taylor & Francis

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 2013

Vol. 24, No. 14, 2670–2691, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2013.770780

our contribution to the growing study of employee engagement is to offer a critical and

contextualized account of different management approaches to engagement.

First, we illustrate how the two organizations face different ‘context contingencies’

which provide both opportunities and constraints for management’s ability to promote an

internal context supportive of employee engagement. There are few studies of engagement

that have focused attention on specific organizational contexts. Rather, academic

discussions are dominated by an occupational psychology perspective which has

developed significant insights into the antecedents of engagement (see Schaufeli and

Bakker 2004) by emphasizing the importance of job and personal resources, but paying

less attention to organizational contexts and the ability of management to deliver these

resources. As Bakker, Albrecht and Leiter’s (2011, p. 23) recent review of the work

psychology literature on engagement identifies, ‘we need to pay more attention to the

broader contextual organizational factors that impact on engagement’. The focus on

antecedents in isolation of these contexts has generally obscured the degree to which

management’s ability to deliver engagement is influenced by a number of contingent

factors: the wider economy and particular industry sector, specific market conditions,

ownership and governance arrangements as well as organizational size and internal

structures.

Second, our insights draw on a more critically oriented approach to the study of HRM

(Keegan and Boselie 2006; Watson 2007; Keenoy 2009; International Journal of Human

Resource Management 2010). This suggests that unitarist and managerialist approaches:

(a) have been largely ignored by practitioners; and (b) have failed to engage with the

complexities of the management challenges inherent in the employment relationship

(Delbridge 2010; Delbridge and Keenoy 2010). Our purpose is to advance understanding

of the practical challenges in delivering employee engagement through a more critical and

contextualized approach to its study. This article proceeds by assessing the literature on

employee engagement to identify the motivation for our research contribution, then details

the research methodology and presents the findings by assessing ‘hard’ and ‘soft’

approaches to employee engagement. The final section concludes by evaluating and

interpreting the findings more generally.

Employee engagement

We concur with Robinson, Perryman and Hayday (2004, ix) definition of employee

engagement which refers to ‘a positive attitude held by the employee toward the

organization and its values. An engaged employee is aware of business context, and works

with employees to improve performance’. Work psychologists note that when employees

are engaged, they express themselves physically, cognitively and emotionally during role

performance. In contrast, ‘disengagement refers to the uncoupling of selves from the work

roles; in disengagement, people withdraw and defend themselves physically, cognitively

and emotionally during role performance’ (Kahn 1990, p. 694). Kahn’s (1990) three

antecedents of job engagement combine an assessment of organizational value systems by

examining value congruence, perceived organizational support when interpersonal

relations in the organization are based on trust and support, and finally, core self-

evaluations which refer to the degree of self-confidence individuals have over the exercise

of influence in their work environment. Moving on from Kahn’s (1990) contextualized

account of momentary engagement and disengagement, researchers have sought to

emphasize the relative stability of engagement; workers either have it or not.

Consequently, studies (e.g. May, Gilson and Harter 2004; Robinson et al. 2004) have

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sought to identify and measure the antecedents of employee engagement. The most widely

used of these is the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale, e.g. Schaufeli and Bakker (2004).

These researchers stress that engagement comprises of three facets: vigour – or work-

related energy and mental resilience; dedication – or being highly involved in work,

feeling work has significance, having pride in work; and absorption in the task – or the

extent to which employees are fully focused on their work. As Truss, Mankin and Kelliher

(2012, p. 223) note, this understanding of employee engagement examines ‘the relation-

ship between the individual and their work’, noting that ‘the consensus at the moment is

that engagement relates specifically to the feelings, cognitions and behaviours that

individuals experience and enact in relation to their specific job’ (2012, p. 224).

Recent psychological studies have sought to measure the influence of different

variables on engagement. For example, Xanthopoulou, Bakker, Demerouti and Schaufeli

(2009, pp. 241 – 242) found that the ‘strong empirical evidence regarding reciprocity

suggests that job and personal resources are mutually related with work engagement, and

also with each other’. However, as Bakker et al. (2011, p. 7) argue, whereas we know quite

a lot about the drivers of work engagement, there is much more research required on

examining the ‘climate for engagement’. Indeed, this omission is evident in the empirical

focus of the Utrecht group. These studies concentrate on the occupational group such as

executives, managers and highly skilled professionals rather than an examination of

occupational groups within specific organizational contexts. Focusing on occupational

factors as the unit of analysis tends to downplay the influence of the organization as a

source of engagement and how different organizations seek to engage employees. Hence,

many psychological studies de-contextualize employee engagement from their

organizational settings.

Within the practitioner perspective, the importance of management’s role in delivering

engagement is afforded centre stage. For example, the report by MacLeod and Clarke

(2009) focuses on leadership and the ensuing development of a strong organizational

culture, management approaches which value employees’ contribution, employee voice

mechanisms and organizational integrity such that trust relations are fostered between the

employees and their organization. The emphasis of this perspective is on how management

can foster an organizational environment, based ostensibly on reciprocity to engage

employees at work. However, within this management-focused agenda, the ‘dark’ side of

engagement relating to stress and burnout for engaged employees has not been frequently

explored. As Robertson and Cooper (2010, p. 324) observe, the current focus of the

engagement literature is based on ‘narrow engagement’, i.e. the factors that are of most

direct benefit to, and success of, the organization (see also Little and Little 2006; Macey

and Schneider 2008). Within a managerialist approach, issues of power and control,

constraint and context are rarely considered. In addition, Purcell, Kinnie, Hutchinson,

Rayton and Swart (2003) are critical of the neglect of the problems inherent in

management and employees ‘sharing’ control in the workplace so that they are able to

exercise voice. Our literature review highlights the difference in emphasis of the

antecedents of engagement evident in the academic and practitioner perspectives. The

academic literature is predominantly drawn from psychology and has provided valuable

insights into the construct of employee engagement and rigorously tested causal relations

between antecedents and engagement outcomes, e.g. Bakker and Demerouti (2008),

Xanthopoulou et al. (2009) and Rich, Lepine and Crawford (2010). The practitioner

literature tends to focus on the capability of managers to deliver engaged employees

without much consideration of the potential for conflicting interests and identifications of

employees, or of job features which may be of benefit to employees. For instance, job

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designs which promote increased employee autonomy and participation are neglected in

their accounts. Our examination of the antecedents of engagement in the two cases fuses

together the insights from the psychology and practitioner perspective to provide a more

contextualized assessment of the drivers of engagement. These include six organizational

features: (i) organizational values; (ii) job features; (iii) organizational support; (iv) social

relations; (v) employee voice; and (vi) organizational integrity, i.e. the way in which

organizational values are translated into practice.

To address issues of context, our examination suggests that there is an opportunity for

further academic exploration into the ability of management to promote a supportive

organizational environment and how this is influenced by a range of contingent features.

The two cases illustrate different management approaches and applications of employee

engagement which mirror the early debates relating to ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ HRM (Storey

1989). ‘Hard’ HRM focused on the ‘resource’ features of HRM and sought to gain

competitive advantage through increased employee effort. In contrast, ‘soft’ HRM

emphasized the ‘human’ dimension of managing people and focused on management

practices which enhanced employee satisfaction. This developed an approach to

management which promoted positive qualitative features including involvement

strategies, participative management and the promotion of strong organizational cultures.

When engagement is pursued to increase employee productivity as the key goal, this can

lead to a piecemeal and instrumental approach to dealing with the complex dimensions

required to develop engaged employees in a sustained way. Conversely, organizations

which approach employee engagement as a ‘soft’ target tend to conceive of employee

engagement itself as a positive outcome and do not focus on productivity as the primary

goal. In summary, we define ‘hard’ approaches to employee engagement as those which

are narrowly and instrumentally focused on individual employee productivity and

organizational performance objectives, and ‘soft’ employee engagement approaches as

those which put the emphasis on individual employees’ experiences at work and see

employee engagement itself as the primary objective. As such, our observations of

different applications of employee engagement strategies share many similarities with

early critiques of HRM. In particular, they mirror the reservations of Guest (1987) and

Legge (1989) regarding the levels of integration of HRM within organizations. This

includes the extent to which HRM is contingent on an external ‘fit’, the degree to which

HRM is integrated within internal organizational processes, whether the approach is

consistent with the attitudes and behaviours of front-line managers and finally, whether

employees identify with organizations. These are broadly understood as the cultural or

normative dimensions of HRM, as Kirkpatrick, Davies and Oliver (1992, p. 146) note,

‘Many of the tenets of HRM package are based on a long-term and developmental

orientation, and indeed require this for their successful operation’.

Further, we contend that the engagement literature could benefit from insights drawn

from the critical literature on HRM and high-performance work systems (HPWS) with two

respects. First, as with the engagement literature, mainstream HRM and HPWS presents

these practices as a ‘win-win’ situation without acknowledging the impact on employees

(Delbridge 2010). Specifically, researchers have emphasized the ‘dark side’ of HRM

(Keenoy 1990) by identifying the negative impact for employees when management seek

to increase discretionary effort to improve performance. More recently, George (2011) has

criticized the managerialist orientation within the engagement literature for ignoring

the ‘dark side’ of engagement for employees. Second, the influence of the internal

and external organizational contexts for management’s delivery of HPWS (Jenkins and

Delbridge 2007) was also largely underdeveloped. As Godard (2004) and Thompson

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(2003) have illustrated, management are faced with a series of disconnections related to

the political economy which means that they cannot always deliver positive benefits to

employees. Thompson’s concept of ‘disconnected capitalism’ provides an important

insight into the way local management are constrained by the contexts in which they

operate.

Our study is inspired by the organizational and critical HRM/HPWS literature to

examine the interrelated connections, tensions and contradictions which influence the

ability of managers to deliver employee engagement. Recent work on the adoption and

adaptation of management practices has highlighted the problems with assumptions of

universality and ready implementation of ‘best practices’ (Huxham and Beech 2003; AIM

[Advanced Institute of Management] 2010). Within HRM, this has led to calls for work

that is more analytical (Boxall, Purcell and Wright 2007), more critical (Janssens and

Steyaert 2009) and more contextual (Paauwe 2009). We extend this analysis in relation to

examining different managerial approaches to employee engagement in two contrasting

organizations, such that our research contribution is to provide a critical assessment of

engagement which highlights the contextual dimensions which influence managerial

agency.

Methods

The paper presents insights from two illustrative case studies of employee engagement.

These organizations were not selected as part of a deliberate comparative research design,

but because they highlight different management approaches to engagement. We explain

these in terms of the contrasting contexts in which these organizations operated, which in

turn influenced management’s ability to promote an internal workplace conducive to

employee engagement. As this was not a planned comparative case design, the exact

nature of our research in the two cases differed. The first of the cases focused on VoiceTel

(a pseudonym), a family-owned, multi-client call centre which provides personalized,

high-quality outsourced message and reception services to a range of businesses across the

UK and is based in Wales. The study was undertaken in 2007 when economic conditions

were favourable and although employee engagement was not the initial focus of this study,

the organization had succeeded in creating a climate which resulted in high levels of

engaged employees. Although the nature of work is characteristic of a call centre –

integrated telephone and computer technology and the entering and retrieval of

information to manage service interactions (Taylor and Bain 1999) – at VoiceTel quality

and value-added services means that the organization relies on employees’ discretion

when dealing with customers. Semi-structured interviews were the main method for data

collection; interviews were conducted with 66 respondents (75% of the workforce): 3

senior managers, 48 receptionists and 15 support staff. All of the receptionists were

female, two senior managers were male and one female and all the support staff were

female apart from two male IT managers. The average length of interview with

receptionists was 49 minutes, all were digitally recorded and transcribed. In addition,

periods of non-participant observation provided valuable insights into the nature of work

and the workplace culture whereas, focused observation of the recruitment assessment day

led to important insights into the recruitment and selection process.

The second study was undertaken in EnergyServ (a pseudonym), a US-owned

multinational corporation which provides a range of services for the global energy market.

Their headquarters (HQ) are based in the USA and the UK HQ are in Scotland where it is

one of the leading service providers to the energy sector. In this study, we were unable to

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conduct the same depth of study as we had done at VoiceTel. The UK senior manager

initially sought our advice in terms of analysing the results of their employee survey on

engagement but such is the dynamism of this context that he moved to work in the

corporate HQ and the uncertainty in the organization meant that further study was not

possible. As such, our data in this study were derived from the two internal employee

surveys conducted in 2008 and 2010, and also in-depth interviews with key informants in

the organization in 2011. Seventeen in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted

with key informants around the subject of employee engagement, all were of a duration of

at least 1 hour. The dialogue with the senior manager was ongoing and involved many

hours of discussion. All formal interviews were taped and transcribed.

Qualitative analysis of the interviews went through a number of iterations. In the first

phase, a sample of interviews was manually coded to generate broad themes and develop a

thematic map of the main categories evident in the data set. These broad themes were

categorized and grouped. After the categorization of data into themes, further rounds of

analysis proceeded to develop smaller and more meaningful codes. As Corbin and Strauss

(2008, p. 66) stress, coding involves:

interacting with the data (analysis) using techniques such as asking questions about the data, making comparisons between the data, and in doing so deriving concepts to stand for that data, then developing those concepts in terms of their properties and dimensions.

An iterative approach to analysis took place in which we examined and blended the range of

antecedents of employee engagement identified in the practitioner and academic literature,

and examined how these were evident in these two cases as organizational values, job

resources, employee voice mechanisms, social relations (these include the work team,

managers and customers) and organizational integrity. The factors which influenced

employee engagement and disengagement were, first, analysed in the separate cases and

then a comparative analysis was undertaken to identify the complementary themes in each

case. In addition, we also took account of how these factors related to the external context to

develop insights from the two cases with the aim of producing novel analytical insights into

employee engagement that might inform further empirical investigation.

Management approaches to engagement

The following data sections set out two contrasting management approaches to

engagement. The case of VoiceTel is illustrative of a ‘soft’ approach to engagement,

whereas EnergyServ typifies a ‘hard’ approach. First, we identify the different external

contexts of the two organizations. Second, we examine how these features influence

management’s ability to promote an internal context which was conducive to the delivery

of engagement by comparing the six drivers of engagement in the two organizations.

External context

Table 1 demonstrates how the external contexts of the two companies differed

substantially. VoiceTel was a successful, growing, small family owned and managed

virtual reception business. The business was founded by brother and sister owners (Laura

and Tim) on a unique technological innovation which led to VoiceTel becoming a market

leader in high-quality virtual reception services. Since 2000, VoiceTel had grown from

four employees to 97 in 2007 with future plans for expansion.

In contrast, EnergyServ is a US-owned multinational company which provides a range

of services to the energy sector. As a global organization, the external environment is

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volatile and unpredictable while the UK operation is located in a highly competitive but

declining market. EnergyServ faced intense competition from other service providers which

placed added emphasis on reducing costs. The central focus of EnergyServ’s corporate goal

for the UK was to gain the largest share of the market through business growth which was in

part achieved through a programme of mergers and acquisitions of other businesses.

The following sections illustrate how the different external contexts influenced

management’s approach to employee engagement and identifies the six drivers of engagement

which are: (i) organizational values – to identify the organizational culture and leadership

styles in the organization; (ii) job features – which include the content of work, demands of

work, and degree of autonomy and discretion; (iii) organizational support – refer to the

rewards and recognition of employee effort and value, and include the management style; (iv)

social relations – these factors focus on relations between employees and management,

employees and their co-workers and employees and customers; (v) employee voice –

examines the communication mechanisms in the organization; and (vi) organizational

integrity – identifies the way in which organizational values are translated into practice.

VoiceTel: a ‘soft’ approach to employee engagement

As evident from Table 1, VoiceTel’s market position enabled the owners to develop a set

of coherent and stable relations with employees which helped shape management practices

to support and develop employee engagement. For these reasons, VoiceTel could be

described as a ‘connected’ workplace whereby management were able to develop a ‘soft’

approach to employee engagement which centred on promoting a workplace context

conducive to engagement.

Organizational values

The story of the inception of VoiceTel centres on Tim’s negative experience of using a

message service and losing crucial business. As a result, the business developed out of

recognizing a space in the market for high-quality reception services which offered

dedicated receptionists who genuinely cared for the clients they worked for. VoiceTel’s

Table 1. Contextual features.

Contextual features VoiceTel EnergyServ

Ownership structure Family-owned Multinational corporation – PLC History New start-up in 2000 Long-established – founded in

the USA Size SME . 100 employees Global – over 1000 in the UK Labour market Homogenous workforce

– predominantly female semi-skilled

Heterogeneous – predominantly male, highly differentiated skill levels

Competitive context Medium – technical innovation and focus on quality led to market dominance

High – intense competition based on cost control

Market conditions Positive – growing market Negative – declining market Business strategy Growth based on expanding and

existing services Growth based on extending market share through mergers and acquisitions

S. Jenkins and R. Delbridge2676

culture emphasized the importance of delivering a quality service, as Laura noted this

meant that receptionists became a part of their clients’ business:

That’s the culture and as much it’s our job as leaders of this company to make sure that our people act and think and walk and talk as if they’re part of that company. Therefore, they [receptionists] are the first impression of the company; they by nature have to be cheery, bubbly, professional and very accommodating of our clients’ customer’s requests. So in order to achieve that we have to create that environment . . . A very high team spirit . . . Everybody knows that if we’re forecasting six inches of snow tomorrow, we want people to actually come in rucksacks and walking boots to get here. And we had someone last year when it snowed like hell, she walked three miles to get here . . . and you just don’t get that in another company . . . It’s that kind of culture that we have or we have to maintain and manage.

The culture sought to transmit that employees were valued, cared for and trusted to

determine how to deliver a quality service. As a consequence of being headed by a brother

and sister team, the organization was permeated by familial values, emphasizing ‘trust’

and the appreciation of individual contributions. The logic and espoused values of the

organization was that client care is promoted through developing reciprocal relations:

the owners valued and cared for employees, the staff treat their customers well and the

customers remain loyal ensuring the success of the business, thus creating a virtuous

circle. As Libby explained:

They [VoiceTel] provide a good service. They care for the clients and also the way they care for us. I have never known a company like it.

They [owners] like to make sure that all the receptionists are happy. I think that is because at the end of the day VoiceTel is successful because of their receptionists. (Caitlin)

Crucially, these values underpinned a number of HR practices relating to recruitment, reward

and recognition. For organizations with strong values, the ability to recruit employees on the

basis of value congruence is crucial, as other researchers on ‘culture management’ have

identified (Grugulis, Dundon and Wilkinson 2000; Callaghan and Thompson 2002).

Employee selection was based on an assessment day event and employees who demonstrated

their ability to ‘go the extra mile’ in their service orientations were hired before those with

previous work experience. The day involved the staff spending time with potential recruits

and hiring decisions were based on whether the candidate would ‘fit in’ to the culture. The

owners sought to create an employment context similar to workplaces where they had enjoyed

working themselves. As Laura commented:

It comes down to the caring thing. What people say they take away from the assessment days is the fact that, you know, we firmly believe that if you’re going to spend eight hours working somewhere then you might as well enjoy it.

Job features

Significantly, this degree of trust was also translated into the design and content of work.

There were no scripts or standardized practices and, unusually for a call centre, there were

no performance measures, direct monitoring of calls or target call-handling times. To ensure

a personalized service, receptionists were allocated to particular clients and afforded a high

degree of discretion over the nature of service delivery which was negotiated directly

between individual employees and their clients. Staff had approximately 40 clients each and

every receptionist was encouraged to get to know them through the initial ‘welcome call’, to

develop rapport and establish the type of service the client required. For example, some

wanted a straightforward answering and message service, whereas others provided detailed

directions on how they want their receptionist to emotionally respond to their customers.

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This might involve the requirement for a ‘bubbly’ and enthusiastic telephone manner,

whereas professional services required a more sober, reserved or caring and empathetic

emotional display. As such, the work involved a high degree of emotional juggling

reflective of Bolton’s (2005) concept of ‘emotional management’ (Jenkins, Delbridge and

Roberts 2010).

Trusting employees to establish the nature of the service interaction with their clients

individually meant that the receptionists were afforded high degrees of discretion in

determining the nature of the service. As the trainer Suzie explained:

What I try and get across to them [in training] more than anything really is that you have to judge the client on the welcome call, you can get some clients who just want us there to be their receptionist, they don’t want to have a relationship with us . . . but you have got to judge that.

As such, receptionists navigated the nature of their relationship with clients. As Fiona noted:

They [owners] leave you to develop a friendship, a relationship with your clients and I think that is one of the things that makes us quite unique . . . We are not a call-centre.

As a consequence, many receptionists reported that their work was inventive, meaningful

and they gained a sense of self-worth from being able to meet clients’ needs:

Yeah I get a great satisfaction out of this, somebody is trying to contact somebody and you do more than you need to, to try to solve it for them and to do it. (Anna)

At VoiceTel, job features were a significant factor in conveying to employees that they

were trusted and allowed them to demonstrate their knowledgeability in work. These

practices were underscored by positive organizational supports.

Organizational support: reward and recognition

To create a workplace context where employees were valued, the owner had researched

local wages to ensure that the pay compared favourably with comparable work in the

labour market. In addition, holiday provision was comparatively good and there was a

private health-care plan. Informal practices were developed to communicate that each

member of the staff was valued and appreciated; these included one-off bonus payments

and social celebrations which were famously lavish. As Roberta noted, these practices

served to reinforce reciprocity between employees and the owners:

How many companies can you go to your boss and ask for a loan interest free and pay it back over two years? It just doesn’t happen. And all the little things like we are taking you out for the night to the races, paying for your meals, paying for your drink . . . then they had hidden £50 notes under all of our chairs . . . it also makes you think that is why so many people don’t phone in sick so often, cos you think they give me all these benefits I don’t want to let them down.

Further, the physical work environment demonstrated the degree of trust which employees

were afforded and the openness of management. The office was spread over two floors of a

new office block, it was a pleasant and relaxed working environment; receptionists wore

the clothes they chose and during quiet moments they were free to read books, magazines

and to browse the internet. These practices communicated that employees were trusted.

Furthermore, the management style meant that employees had direct and personal contact

with the owners and senior management, and they emphasized to receptionists how much

they were appreciated. As Pat noted:

I think Tim and Laura are fantastic people to work for. So generous, they praise us all the time for the amount of work that we do . . . Tim especially . . . is always sending emails around saying you are great, you are fantastic, don’t ever change . . . you know and just simple things

S. Jenkins and R. Delbridge2678

like that make a whole lot of difference. It makes you want to come to work in the morning and makes you want to do your job really well.

The outward recognition of employees also reinforced the positive nature of social

relations in the workplace.

Social relations

Workplace social relations were tripartite involving employees and their employer,

teammates and clients. As Saks’ (2006, p. 213) research confirms, ‘employees who

perceive higher organizational support are more likely to reciprocate with greater levels of

engagement in their job and in the organization’. Along with very positive views of their

employers, receptionists also stressed the importance of team identification and supportive

relations with their co-workers:

You don’t wake up in the morning and think ‘Oh my God, work!’ It’s more like you can get up and see your friends and working in between . . . because we all have a giggle on our team, we all have a good laugh but we get our work done. (April)

In addition, relations with their clients were reported as positive and meaningful:

They’re [the clients] just like your family in some cases. They’ll just ring you up or, you know, if they’re having a bad day they’ll just email and just say I’m having the worst day ever, and you just email them back and just cheer them up. (Melissa)

For some, friendships with clients developed outside the workplace with a number of

employees reporting that they had met up with them outside work, sometimes travelling

large distances (clients did not routinely visit VoiceTel and could be located anywhere

in the UK).

As Kahn (1990, p. 707) reported, employees experience meaningfulness when

their tasks also involve rewarding interpersonal interactions with co-workers and

clients. Work was organized into teams of four with a team leader playing a supportive

mentoring role. This had partly been facilitated by the careful selection of team

leaders who were overwhelmingly described as ‘approachable’ and ‘open’ by their team

members.

Employee voice

Informal and individual voice mechanisms were well developed at VoiceTel. The

personalized management style and the size of the organization meant that employees had

the ability to communicate directly with the owners as Chloe commented:

Everyone can just talk to everybody, you know, if you’ve ever got any problems or anything like that, you can always, even go to Tim or Laura, I mean in some companies going to the main person, it’s just completely out of the question . . . But here . . . they value all of you, so they will listen to you, and they will take time, you know.

Significantly, employees felt involved in the organization and that the owners had actively

listened to their views. As Ruby noted:

You become a bit more involved as well, I mean Mark [Managing Director], Laura and Tim do try and keep you involved with all of the things that are going on, so it is not all secretive, you feel like you are a part of something and that it isn’t them and us.

There were no formal or collective employee representation mechanisms.

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Organizational integrity

The report by MacLeod and Clarke (2009, p. 33) defines organizational integrity as when

an employee sees the stated values of an organization being lived by the leadership and

colleagues. A sense of trust in the organization is more likely to be developed, and this

constitutes a powerful enabler of engagement. At VoiceTel, organizational integrity was

high; employees’ direct contact with owners and managers meant that the behaviour of

management could be closely observed. The values which management espoused were

seen to translate into how work was designed and managed, and the reward and

recognition of employees. As such, the overwhelming response of employees was positive

and resulted in a highly engaged workforce:

I’m proud to work here . . . they [owners] make you feel appreciated and grateful for what you do. They are forever saying VoiceTel is what it is because you do such a good job . . . This is a fab place to work. (Vicky)

I think the values here are a bit different, they [employer] don’t treat their staff as just like money makers . . . they really want you to do well, they want you to be happy. (Joan)

The study of VoiceTel evidences a number of drivers of engagement from the literature. These

include employees’ ability to engage in meaningful work and exercise discretion; to develop

positive workplace relationships with clients, owners and co-workers; an ability to exercise

voice; appropriate recognition and rewards; a supportive work community; fairness and

justice at work; and the development of reciprocal relations between employees and owners

(Kahn 1990; May et al. 2004; Saks 2006). The owners’ management philosophy is indicative

of a ‘soft’ approach to engagement whereby the overall goal is not improving productivity but

creating a workplace context in which employees feel valued and supported, stimulating

employee commitment. As Robinson et al.’s (2004) definition of engagement highlights,

employees at VoiceTel were positively disposed to the values of the organization and,

consequently, routinely engaged in discretionary effort in interactions with their clients

beyond management expectations. These acts involved receptionists providing advice to their

clients on how to best optimize their use of VoiceTel services and even providing services that

were not part of their commercial package or indeed sanctioned by VoiceTel. For example,

although receptionists were not allowed to collect payments for their clients, one employee

did so and banked these during her own private time. When management were made aware

they communicated to the client that this practice was to stop. However, many employees

reported ‘going the extra mile’ in the degree of service provision and were satisfied to do so.

Nevertheless, although receptionists reported very positive feelings about their workplace and

their owners resulting in such discretionary effort, it is also important to recognize that high

levels of engagement are not always positive for employees and in the long-term may lead to

employee burnout and stress (George 2011).

EnergyServ: a ‘hard’ approach to employee engagement

The wider economic and organizational context set out in Table 1 indicates that UK

management were required to concentrate on achieving efficiency and growth by

maximizing productivity and observing strict cost controls. In 2010, this resulted in a

series of staff reductions such that the total UK workforce decreased by 20%. Although

these were made primarily through redundancies, there was also a high level of voluntary

employee turnover. This was linked to the second consequence of the cost controls:

deteriorating employee pay, benefits and promotion prospects. The organization had not

S. Jenkins and R. Delbridge2680

awarded pay increases or performance bonuses for the previous two years, the final

pension scheme had been closed and promotion opportunities were curtailed.

Organizational values

EnergyServ’s organizational values emphasized two features: financial profitability and

employee safety. The focus on health and safety was important within this industry

and EnergyServ had built a reputation for having excellent safety procedures. However, to

increase profitability, UK management concentrated on achieving efficiency and growth

by seeking to maximize the contribution of its workforce through promoting a more

engaged workforce. The approach was reflective of a ‘hard’ approach to employee

engagement – driving profitability through maximizing employee effort. In interviews,

managers demonstrated their awareness of this strategy:

It’s our people that deliver every day for us, we are so dependent on our people, you know as a management team, as a workforce either in the workshops or specifically in a customer’s setting. We are so dependent on these guys to get it right first time and deliver a good job. So therefore our employee engagement has got to be spot on. (Craig, senior management)

As Paul, who had recently been promoted to a middle management position noted:

They [the senior management team] think a more engaged employee would generally be a more benefit to the company and improve financial performance, peer results, morale, the whole shooting match really.

Interestingly, Malcolm (middle manager) echoed the sentiments of Laura, the owner of

VoiceTel, to indicate that management had similar intentions and values to enhance

employee engagement:

EnergyServ is a very people orientated you know, that sense of community and pride in the company. And I think you have to achieve that all levels to truly be a place you want to work, people enjoy working and I think if that is done correctly financial goals and the company desires when it goes to stock market would follow on. So for me personally, you want people to enjoy coming to work, enjoy what they’re doing, get the best out of them and it makes a better place for them to come to work.

Despite senior management’s stated intention to develop a context which is conducive to

promoting employee engagement, they were aware that the overarching organizational

objective was financial success and this held sway at corporate levels:

At the end of the day my responsibility is to add value to the shareholders, to deliver revenue to the company . . . but because of the global economic crisis and the way that affected us and the way that energy prices have dramatically dropped over the last couple of years then absolutely, it’s probably not the nicest industry to work in. (Craig)

Against this difficult external background, Martin, the UK manager, remained committed

to improving employee engagement and sought to gain further insight into employee

views and experiences by using an internal staff survey and an external organization’s

survey of workplaces of choice as a benchmarking exercise to highlight areas of good

practice as well as identify areas in need of improvement.

However, the information from both the 2010 internal employee survey and the 2010

independent survey revealed a steep deterioration in employees’ perceptions of their

employer from the previous survey in 2008. There was a significant decline in employees’

satisfaction with management strategy with a decline of 18% for the UK overall and a 37%

decrease for some functions. Trust in management also declined 19% for the UK overall,

with the largest decline in a single function of 31%. Confidence in the country or district

The International Journal of Human Resource Management 2681

management was down by 15% for UK overall with a 33% decline in one function. There

was also a significant reduction in employees’ ratings of their pay and benefits, and 29% of

the UK workforce surveyed stated that their satisfaction/commitment to the organization

was ‘unfavourable’ (a reduction of 17% in this rating from the 2008 survey).

In relation to issues of identification to the organization, the largest decline in the

favourable ratings from the 2008 survey were with respect to the employees’ responses to

whether they were ‘proud to work’ for EnergyServ Global (declined by 14%), and

EnergyServ Global was ‘a great place to work’ went down by 34% for the UK overall. In

addition, the overall employee morale rating had declined by 21% for the UK. Moreover,

while the ratings for employee voice had declined by 10%, for some of the individual

business units the decline had been as great as 21% and 48%. Finally, intention to quit

within the next six months was reported at an average across functions of 20%.

Overall, the surveys indicated deterioration in employee satisfaction and disengage-

ment at the very time when senior management had been seeking to promote greater

employee engagement. To examine this decline, we have considered the same issues as

used in assessing VoiceTel.

Job features

A significant cause of discontent was the impact of staff redundancies and turnover. People

who had left the organization had not been replaced and this had resulted in increased

workloads for remaining employees:

One of my biggest criticisms or frustrations is this whole people are leaving and not getting replaced, . . . if one guy leaves then his workload is just spread across maybe 2 or 3 guys, and you think what’s the point? (Gavin, maintenance department)

Work intensification also stemmed from the business strategy based on expansion, as such,

for shop-floor staff the amount of work had not decreased despite the reduction in

employees. In addition to the firm’s redundancy policy, voluntary employee turnover had

also increased and this was attributed to issues around the relative decline in terms and

conditions. For Gavin, this perceived deterioration in rewards was proving detrimental to

the organization and to employee morale:

I don’t know but they’ve got to be aware of people’s frustration, lack of promotion, lack of pay-rises. And all in all people leaving, I mean people leaving has an effect on morale, we see good guys leaving every other week and it’s not good. I: Can you summarize some of these reasons?

Job satisfaction is one. Money is another, that’s an obvious one. Morale, increased workload and no reward.

Within this context, employees also reported that the tightening of financial targets

curtailed their autonomy and ability to make decisions because everything had to be

justified in terms of costs. As Ian noted, the final decision to approve the appointment of a

new member of staff had to be made by the Europe manager:

It’s an American organisation and the Americans are all power happy, so it’s got to go across to the desk of the local manager, the UK and then the continental Europe manager . . . What a waste of time!

This degree of financial scrutiny undermined management’s ability to allow their shop-

floor staff to make decisions and influenced employees’ perception that more power was

being exerted by corporate HQ which in turn undermined their trust and confidence in

local management. Thus, the external context and the resulting stringent financial

S. Jenkins and R. Delbridge2682

pressures had negatively impacted a number of job features at EnergyServ producing work

intensification, added cost pressures, a curtailment of both management and employee

autonomy which led to the corrosion of trust in senior management.

Organizational support: reward and recognition

Despite senior management’s concerns to create a more engaged workforce, the

experience of staff was that they were not valued by the organization. This lack of

recognition was underscored by Robbie, an employee with over 40 years experience

within the sector, who complained that there was a lack of reciprocity between the staff

and the management. For him, employees were expected to work extra to deal with

unexpected peaks in work, but management did not value or recognize employees’ efforts:

See that’s the thing . . . it’s a two-way situation. You ask your men to do things out of the ordinary, . . . they’re coming in, they’re working all night trying to get this piece of kit sorted out, and they might work a couple of nights you know, day shift during the day, night shift coming back on at night, splitting the team in half. That’s good teamwork, they never get any thanks for it, no thanks whatsoever.

Another dimension to feeling undervalued was related to pay inequities; this was evident

in differences within the organization as well as deteriorating relative levels between

EnergyServ and its competitors. Differential pay levels within EnergyServ emanated from

the varied financial performance between business units and also the different payment

structures of business which EnergyServ had acquired. Some of the employees in these

companies had enjoyed higher salary levels than their EnergyServ counterparts. In

addition, the fragmented organizational structure and variable performance levels meant

that some employees were not entitled to bonus payments as Paul noted:

I remember working for a business unit at one point when we hadn’t done well and we didn’t get bonus pay when the rest of the company did, and that was ugly.

Further, employees perceived that EnergyServ pay rates were low relative to their

competitors:

I think they originally did their market research, I think they were probably at the top end of what they pay. But I would probably say they’re at the bottom end now. Because people are leaving for an extortionate amount more money . . . For instance one of our key guys left and he doubled his salary. (Ian)

The financial pressures which EnergyServ experienced meant that management’s ability

within the UK to address pay inequities within the business as well as with local

competitors was extremely constrained. In addition, the matrix management system

served to exacerbate rather than ameliorate perceived inequity and unfairness. As such

management faced severe constraints when attempting to promote an internal context

which was conducive to engagement.

Social relations

Far from the harmonious and mutually reinforcing social relations reported by employees at

VoiceTel, in EnergyServ social relations were fractured. There are a number of explanations

including the complex matrix system of management reporting which involved a sequence

from global level to hemisphere, country, regional, division and business product manager.

This structure was seen to add extra layers of complexity and enhanced competition rather

than collaboration between business units and employees. As Derek, a senior manager noted:

The International Journal of Human Resource Management 2683

There are organisations within EnergyServ. ‘Alpha’ organisation does it one way and ‘Beta’ do it another way . . . there’s quite defined pay bands, but there are different off-shore bonus structures, there are different overtime structures . . . The structure of the business is almost that each service line is pretty much its own company.

In addition, the long-held policy of mergers and acquisitions of smaller competitor firms

meant that social relations within the workplace were further divided as employees had

different degrees of identification to EnergyServ. Malcolm (manager) commented that

some employees referred to each other as the ‘blues’ or the ‘greens’ – the corporate colours

of their original employers, even though EnergyServ had acquired these companies many

years previously.

In addition, because corporate imposed financial constraints, collective social

gatherings, which can enhance identification to the organization, had been cancelled for

the past two years. As Ian said:

It’s a shame that they seem to have lost sight of the goal with people you know a lot of things like you know they used to have a summer BBQ . . . you could take your kids along to it, didn’t do that the last two years. Didn’t have a Christmas night out for two Christmases.

Ian, who had worked for EnergyServ for six years, said that previously the maintenance

team had enjoyed informal barbeques at lunchtime in the yard in the summer months but

this had now been stopped:

I couldn’t understand it . . . every company should be promoting stuff that keeps us social, keeps us together, encourages people to talk you know.

Employee voice

Another area of concern expressed by interviewees was the lack of opportunity to exercise

voice as there were few formal channels of communication. Employees noted that there

was little interaction with the senior management team since the staff meetings had

stopped. As Paul, a middle manager, asserted:

I think management in general need to make more effort to engage their employees to listen to what they’ve got to say, to actually show that they’ve done something about it. To give them more opportunity to voice those concerns . . . they need to make more effort to speak to the people who are . . . the nuts and bolts of the company and they are the ones that make things happen. And if they feel that they’re not being listened to or they feel that they’re left to their own devices because they are on the shop floor, then they’re going to get demotivated.

As there was no trade union representation or staff committee, communication was often

based on rumours and speculation. Ian commented:

There’s no communication, for instance about the new merger . . . To me the people that’s most important is . . . people at the coalface actually doing the work, they’re the people that’s meeting the customer, and they’re forgetting about that . . . and there seems to be a sort of a disconnect there so . . . I’ve never seen morale as low as this in anywhere I’ve worked.

The lack of opportunity to raise issues with management could also explain the low

reported levels of employee identification with the organization.

Organizational integrity

At a global level, EnergyServ continued with its policy of mergers and acquisitions and

corporate management were still rewarded extremely well. As many employees had been

S. Jenkins and R. Delbridge2684

made redundant and faced pay freezes, this contrast was closely scrutinized by employees,

as Robbie explained:

Management keep pleading poverty when it comes to pay rises . . . and then all of a sudden they go out and buy a company . . . Well I think a little portion of that would give the guys a lot more encouragement.

Feelings of discontent were exacerbated by the reporting of the personal fortune of the

Global MD in a popular business magazine, which coincided with his visit to the UK to

announce wage freezes. Some employees had posted the article around the building for the

visit which detailed the cost of his personal jet at $1.5 million and $100,000 for chauffeurs.

Employees highlighted the conflicting interests between employees and management such

that they had been disproportionately affected in the difficult economic circumstances.

Prioritizing financial targets and the tough controls exerted by the corporate HQ were

therefore perceived to contradict corporate messages claiming to value employees and

promoting the common good. For Paul, this undermined good management practice and

the principles of employee engagement:

When we get in to tough times we focus so much on cost that we really, really tighten the grip. I don’t think it’s healthy because . . . the guys who are here employed to run the business feel like they are no more than janitors in a lot of cases . . . They know they have to come to Martin [UK Senior Manager], and that’s not good for employee engagement, that’s not good for morale, you really feel that every ounce of control or power they have has just been taken away from them.

Overall, it was perceived by employees that, despite the rhetoric of valuing employees and

their important contribution to business success, they had borne the brunt of the economic

and industry downturn and faced the pressures of work intensification, pay and promotion

freezes and the cessation of the company pension. This, and the resultant low employee

satisfaction/commitment scores (only 29% of the workforce reported favourably), had

undermined the prospects of enhancing employee engagement as local management were

unable to promote a more conducive organizational context in the light of these external

and internal contingencies.

Discussion

This paper has reported on two different case studies to highlight the relationship between

wider external contingent factors and the prospects for local managers to promote

Table 2. Drivers of engagement.

Drivers of engagement VoiceTel – ‘soft’ engagement EnergyServ – ‘hard’ engagement

Organizational values Promotes trust relations for high-quality service delivery

Promotes safe work standards and financial profitability

Job features Light touch management control – discretion over the conduct of work

High financial controls – limited decision-making discretion at all levels

Rewards and recognition Positive rewards and strong recognition mechanisms

Negative rewards and recog- nition mechanisms

Social relations Reciprocal Fractured Employee voice Strong informal voice mechan-

isms Weak voice mechanisms

Organizational integrity Perceived as high Perceived as low

The International Journal of Human Resource Management 2685

organizational contexts that are conducive to employee engagement. We have identified

the wider economy and particular industry sectors, the nature of the specific market

conditions, corporate ownership and governance arrangements as well as organizational

size and internal management structures as key contextual contingencies. The implications

of these contingencies were further examined through the assessment of how these cases

differed in relation to the six drivers of employee engagement: organizational values, job

features, organizational support, social relations, employee voice and organizational

integrity as indicated in Table 2.

These contingencies inform different approaches to employee engagement, which we

have compared with earlier research on ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ approaches to HRM. VoiceTel

displayed a ‘soft’ form of engagement and through a series of external and internal

connections was able to deliver mutual gains for employees and the owners. VoiceTel was a

successful market leader in its sector, a small family-owned firm with an expanding market

and relatively benign business environment. These contingent factors contributed to a context

whereby the owners were able to develop their own local rules to exemplify the organization’s

approach and communicate a coherent company narrative. In relation to the literature on the

antecedents of engagement, this study supports the importance of job features (Schaufeli and

Bakker 2004; Bakker and Demerouti 2008). The VoiceTel case demonstrates the design of the

labour-process-mirrored organizational values and allowed the owners to invest in job

resources which gave employees a high level of discretion and the opportunity to use their

knowledgeability within the context of tripartite and mutually reinforcing social relations. In

this sense, the capacity of management to create a high-trust context which encouraged

employee discretion, was connected to the competitive strategy of the organization with

respect to delivering a high quality and personal service to its clients. In addition, staff at all

levels were able to identify themselves with the organization’s values and within this context,

management were comfortable in promoting direct dialogue. VoiceTel’s owners were thus

able to develop a set of connections at workplace level partly because of the supportive

contexts in which the organization was located; this enabled a ‘soft’ approach to the successful

development of employee engagement.

In contrast, EnergyServ demonstrated the tensions and challenges of attempting to deliver

employee engagement at a local workplace level when part of a large and complex

organizational structure, particularly in the context of tough financial targets and close scrutiny

by the global HQ. In this environment, it was difficult to see how employee engagement

connected with the organizational strategy, business values and corporate narrative of

EnergyServ, even if this corresponded with a ‘hard’ version of employee engagement.

EnergyServ was illustrative of a disconnected workplace where local management could not

deliver their side of the bargain of mutual gains in relation to the wage-effort bargain and job

security. This lack of coherence exemplifies the challenges for managers operating within the

constraining disconnections of contemporary capitalism (Thompson 2003). At EnergyServ,

these disconnections played out at workplace level and resulted in conflicting interests

between employees and the organization, a fracturing of identities for individuals and groups

of employees and fragmenting relations between employees themselves (Jenkins and

Delbridge 2007). In this case, employee engagement did not cohere with the overall business

and management strategy, and resulted in a largely failing attempt at engagement.

The opportunity to generalize the relative success of different approaches to

engagement is limited from our examination of two exploratory cases. However, we have

identified the difficulties management can encounter when they embark upon employee

engagement as a corporate strategy linked to definable performance outcomes such as

increased productivity and profitability – a ‘hard’ approach to engagement. This is brought

S. Jenkins and R. Delbridge2686

into sharp relief when organizations are faced with a harsh and changeable external context

and management’s ability to deliver mutual gains becomes increasingly precarious.

Concurrently, this context constrains management’s ability to promote an internal context

that may encourage increased employee discretionary effort and productivity. These

observations of employee engagement share similar insights to critical HPWS researchers

(Godard 2004; Delbridge 2007) in showing the importance of external and internal

organizational contexts when attempting to deliver high performance. As EnergyServ

illustrates, management were not able to deliver crucial job features with respect to

autonomy and trust, and they were limited in their capacity to reward and recognize

employees’ contribution. This led to questions over the integrity of the organization and

ultimately resulted in fractured workplace social relations between management and

employees. In addition, as the focus of this research has been to provide a more complex,

critical and contextualized account of management approaches to employee engagement, it

is important to acknowledge that there can be a ‘dark side’ to engagement. For instance, at

VoiceTel many employees did extend their discretionary effort and for some this resulted in

increased workloads. Therefore, although the receptionists were overwhelmingly positive

about their work experiences and identification to the organization at the time of the study, it

cannot be assumed that this will continue in the future, or be positive for all employees even

within workplaces which espouse ‘soft’ engagement (see George 2011).

Conclusions

Our observations address Bakker et al.’s (2011) recent call for research to pay more

attention to the broader contextual organizational factors that impact engagement and

confirm their importance. In interpreting our findings in terms of successful employee

engagement, we would raise a cautionary note. The success of VoiceTel is not something

which can be readily replicated, nor can a prescriptive list of antecedents to engagement be

applied unproblematically to other contexts. The set of connections exemplified at VoiceTel

are fragile in nature, and changes to, for example, the ownership structure, market position

and size of the organization have the potential to destabilize these balanced connections.

More generally, although the psychology and the practitioner literatures have provided

insights into the various drivers of engagement, both need to be complemented with

acknowledgement of the importance of external and internal organizational contexts and the

opportunities and constraints management face when seeking to deliver employee

engagement. To be clear, we are not promoting a structural contingency approach to

employee engagement; we would not wish to convey a deterministic line of argument and

suggest that contingencies lead to a specific management approach with definitive

outcomes. Instead, we argue that currently, the engagement literature has not paid sufficient

attention to the complexities of external and internal organizational contexts. Moreover, the

assessment of these is vital both for academics seeking to comprehend the dynamics of

employee engagement and for practitioners’ attempts to deliver engagement at the

workplace level. In this regard, our points resonate with the early work on HRM by Guest

regarding the integration of HRM with external and internal organizational contexts. The

significance of these factors also stands as a warning against the universalist assumption

within strands of the employee engagement literature. Management practices are not

simple, uniform, easily codified or readily adopted, and the idea of universal best practice is

fundamentally flawed (AIM 2010). It is not solely a matter of agency whether managers are

able to engage employees and their ability to deliver on engagement is informed by

structural dimensions such as the nature of the specific industry and the broader political

The International Journal of Human Resource Management 2687

economy in which firms are located. This leads us to suggest that employee engagement

represents a number of challenges for management best understood in terms of their ability

to develop a coherent organizational narrative with regard to the organization’s strategy and

‘business model’, promote the locally negotiated emergence of effective practices rather

than the adoption of ‘best practice’, the encouragement of employee participation and

collaboration, and the development of mutual and reciprocal employment relations. As the

early critiques of HRM provided by Legge (1989) and Purcell (1987) remind us, if

employees are only conceived in instrumental terms as ‘resources’ or ‘assets’, then such

‘hard’ HRM will be piecemeal and opportunistic. These initial cases suggest that such

observations also hold when assessing different management approaches towards engaging

employees and more detailed research is warranted.

Our exploratory examination of two extreme cases highlights that these two

organizations operate at either end of a continuum; we would not suggest that management

approaches represent a simplistic dualism between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ engagement. As is the

case for HR practice, ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ dimensions may exist in conjunction with each other

rather than as a polarity. The insights drawn from these particular cases can inform more

systematic research approaches which examine the internal and external conditions and the

range of management practices which operate as a continuum from softer to harder

approaches to employee engagement. For us, the significant lessons from these two

illustrative cases are the insight that they give into why employee engagement is extremely

difficult to deliver in practice. The nature of the external context in which many

organizations operate as well as the fact that many of the key drivers of employee

engagement rest on a number of often highly contested and normative features go some way

to explaining why employee disengagement is much more prevalent than employee

engagement (Kular, Gatenby, Rees, Soane and Truss 2008). These features have been the

subject of extensive critical research and include the questionable ability of management to

control and manipulate organizational cultures (Willmott 1993), whether new management

practices do in reality cede control to employees (Knights and McCabe 1998), whether

labour processes are designed to enhance employee discretion and autonomy such that

workers can fully utilize their skills and knowledgeability (Taylor, Mulvey, Hyman and

Bain 2002; Baldry et al. 2007), whether workplace relations are based on trust (Reed 2001)

and the likelihood of the panacea for organizational problems residing in strong and

inspirational leadership (Alvesson and Sveningsson 2003). These researchers remind us that

the ‘ingredients’ of engagement are infused with power and conflict. As such, we warn of the

limitations of managerialist and unitarist approaches to the understanding of the challenges

in managing employees and endorse Bolton and Houlihan’s (2007, p. 10) calls for

management practices to take more consideration of the ‘human’ in its ‘thickest terms’. Our

analysis of the ‘softer’ application of employee engagement highlights that when the

contribution of employees is valued and when the ‘human’ is placed at the centre of the

organization, then employees respond positively. Having said that, we need to extend the

critical examination of the consequences for employees in high-engagement workplaces.

Increased discretionary effort has the potential for long-term negative effects for

employees, including work intensification, presenteeism and stress. The ‘hard’ application

takes a more instrumental conception of the ‘human’ and as a consequence when employees

are viewed solely in economic terms, ‘humanity is “squeezed” and the resource is never seen

in its full light’ (Bolton and Houlihan 2007, p. 10). The prospects for delivering engaged

employees are significantly influenced by the organizational approach to people

management as well as how this coheres with the complex external and internal contexts

which local management navigate.

S. Jenkins and R. Delbridge2688

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Ashley Roberts for his help in collecting data in one of the case studies. Rick Delbridge gratefully acknowledges the support of the ESRC through the Advanced Institute of Management Research (ESRC – RES-331-25-0014) and the Centre for Research in Skills, Knowledge and Organizational Performance (ESRC – ABC). This research has been partially supported by the ESRC through its grant to the ESRC Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance (SKOPE), RES-557-28-5003 and the Advanced Institute of Manage- ment Research [Grant ESRC RES-331-25-0014].

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