Context matters examining ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ approaches to emp.docx

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
The International Journal of Human Resource Management 2671

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
S. Jenkins and R. Delbridge2672
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
(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
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
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
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.
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
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.
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
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
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
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:
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
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
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
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
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.
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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Journal of Social Lssues, Vol, 49, No. 4, 1993, pp. 227-251
The Bases of Power:
Origins and Recent Developments
Bertram H. Raven

University of California, Los Angeles
The history and background of the analysis of the basis of
power is examined,
beginning with its origins in the works of Kurt Lewin and his
followers at the
Research Center for Group Dynamics, particularly the early
research by John
R. P. French. The original French and Raven (1959) bases of
power model
posited six bases of power; reward, coercion, legitimate, expert,
referent, and
informational (or persuasion; Raven, 1965), Since then, as the
result of consider-
able research, the model has gone through significant
developments. A more
comprehensive model is presented here that reviews the
following; various mo-
tivations of the influencing agent; an assessment of available
power bases in
terms of potential effectiveness, time perspective, personal
preferences, values
and norms; consideration of other strategies such as
manipulation; utilization of
various preparatory and stage-setting devices to strengthen
one's power re-
sources; implementation of the power strategies; assessment of
effectiveness of
influence attempt and its positive and/or negative aftereffects;
use of various
ameliorative devices; and review, reconsideration, and another
round of influ-
ence strategies. The overall model is examined in terms of its
applicability to
various settings including hospital infection control, patient
compliance with

physicians' recommendations, confrontations between political
figures, chil-
dren's influence on their peers, conflict resolution and
negotiation, as well as
supervisor I subordinate relationships.
More than 30 years have now elapsed since John R. P. French
and I pre-
sented a typological analysis of the bases of power in
interpersonal in-
This article is ba.sed on a presentation made at the Centennial
Convention of the American
Psychological Association, Washington, DC, August 17, 1992,
as part of a Symposium in Honor of
Joim R. P. French on his receiving of the Kurt Lewin Award
from the Society for the Psychological
Study of Social Issues.
Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to
Bertram H. Raven, Department of
Psychology, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1563.
227
O22.4537/9.1/12OO.O227$(n.0O © 1993 The Socitly foi the
Psychological Study of Social b s n c s
228 Raven
fluence (French & Raven, 1959; Raven, 1965, 1983). In this
article, I shall
discuss the origins of this analysis and point to subsequent and
future develop-

ments.
The Origins and Initial Formulation of tbe Bases of Power
Model
Ktirt Lewin's Conception of Power
ITiose who are only familiar with recent works on the bases of
power may
not be aware of the extent to which our work was stimulated by
the many insights
of Kurt Lewin. Lewin's name is not ordinarily associated with
social power, but
even in his early writings the concept of power and power fields
was in evidence.
Lewin defined "power" as "'the possibility of inducing forces' of
a certain
magnitude on another person." Such power could extend over a
broad span of
that other person's potential activities, what Lewin would call
tbe "power field"
(Lewin, 1944/1951). In discussing the power of the adult over
the child, he
illustrated the adult's power field as a series of concentric
circles, emanating
from the adult and encompassing the life space of the child
(Lewin, 1935, p.
131ff.), as can be seen in Fig. 1. In such a situation, he said,
"The child
may . . . carr>' out unpleasant tasks unhesitatingly because at
every point within
h i s sphere of action he is interrmlly controlled b y t h e w i s h
e s o f t h e a d u l t . . . "
(p. 132).
Pig. 1. Kurt Lewin's conception of the power field of the adult

(A) with respect to the child (C).
(Reprinted by permission from Lewin, 1935, p. 131.)
The Bases of Power 229
Fig, 2, Kurt Lewm's conceptualization of the child (C) within
the power fields of his father (¥).
grandmother (G), and his tutor, St. Jerome (J), from a story by
Tolstoy. (Reprinted by permission
from Lewin, 1935, p. 146.)
Of course, a person may be simultaneously affected by the
power of several
persons, placing him or her under conflicting pressures. From a
woric of Leo
Tolstoy, Lewin illustrated the pressures on a child from the
power fields of his
father, his grandmother, and his tutor, with concommitant
conflicts and frustra-
tions (Lewin, 1935, p. 148), (See Fig, 2,)
As Lewin and his colleagues extended their interest to group
dynamics, they
paid increasing attention to the power of the group over the
individual. Often, it
seemed, an influencing agent, attempting to change the behavior
of persons,
would find that his/her influence attempts were countered by
group norms in an
opposing direction. It thus appeared that, in such circumstances,
it would be
more effective to influence the behavior of the members of a
group collectively,
rather than individually. This would be accomplished by

presenting the reasons
for change to the group collectively, encouraging the members
to discuss the
need for change, and then to arrive at a group decision to
change—assuming, of
course, that, on review and discussion of the reasons, the group
would arrive at a
decision advocated by the change agent. Such an approach
proved effective in
getting college students to eat more whole wheat rather than
white bread; in
getting mothers to serve more whole milk, orange juice, and cod
liver oil to their
230 Raven
children; in encouraging the consumption of less desirable cuts
of meat during a
wartime meat shortage, and in encouraging workers to change
their method and
rate of operation (Lewin, 1947, 1952).
Power arui Resistance to Change
Jack French, and his colleague Lester Coch found clear support
for this
approach to overcoming resistance to change by workers at the
Harwood Manu-
facturing Corporation (see Fig. 3). The resistance to change
came, they said.
•s
• 0

75
»
CO
so
4S
40
3S
W7V
A^^r^---'/'V '̂
i V
• _ No pwtKipMion
Pwiicipition throufX rcpmtnlaticn
Tel*l p*rticip«lioo
I
i
V
' — Tetil panicipation
0 S 10
BclOftTransftr
10 15 20

AfWr Tr*ntl*r
X)
o»y»
Fig. 3 . Woriceis at the Harwood Manufacturing Corporation
resisting change advocated by manage-
ment and overcoming resistance to change following
participation in group decision making and
standard setting. (Repdnted by permission from Coch and
French, Jr., 1948, p. 523.)
The Bases of Power 231
from a tendency to adhere to group standards that were opposed
to the requests
from management. Thus, change in production rate could be
accomplished
through full participation and group decision by the workers
involved, with
concomitant changes in group standards. Such an approach, they
felt, would be
more effective than the more common method of management
simply telling the
workers what changes should be implemented, even if these
instructions were
accompanied by full explanations and reasons for the requested
changes in work
behavior, reinforced by the expertise of time-study specialists,
"The no-
participation procedure had the effect for the members of
setting up management
as a hostile power field" (Coch & French, 1948, p. 528). The

conflicting forces
from management and group norms would contribute to
frustration in the work-
ers, similar to what Lewin had described in his analysis of the
boy in Tolstoy's
story—except that the workers had an additional option—to
"leave the field,"
Indeed, Coch and French did observe higher turnover rate
among workers under
these conditions. Mutual participation with management in
decision making
would operate like influence from a friend, such that the
induced force would act
more like an own force. That is, the change would be
internalized, with obvious
advantages for management and the organization (Coch &
French, 1948), In
rereading this article after many years, I am struck by the extent
to which what
we later called the "bases of power" are reflected in the rich
discussion of
Harwood factory: Management with its coercive, reward,
legitimate, informa-
tional, and expert power (and hampered by its negative expert
and negative
referent power) was opposed by the referent and personal
coercive power of the
work group.
The Focus on Power at the Research Center for Group Dynamics
In the 1950s, the emphasis on group influence continued at the
Research
Center for Group DjTiamics, with Leon Festinger and his co-
workers examining
pressures toward uniformity in groups (Festinger, 1950, 1954),

Meanwhile,
Ronald Lippitt and his team focused on implications of his
earlier classic work
with Lewin and Ralph White on leadership styles (Lewin,
Lippitt, & White,
1939), In studies of what they called "contagion" of behavior in
youths in
summer camps, they had explored the factors that led to some
campers being
seen as more influential, more powerful, than others (Lippitt,
Polansky, Redl, &
Rosen, 1952), Alvin Zander and his group examined how people
in lower power
positions tend to behave defensively toward the powerful
(Hurwitz, Zander, &
Hymovitch, 1953; Zander & Cohen, 1955), Such effects became
particularly
apparent in mental health teams consisting of psychiatrists,
psychologists, and
psychiatric social workers (Zander, Cohen, & Stotland, 1959),
Meanwhile,
Frank Harary (Harary, 1959) joined Dorwin Cartwright in
applying graph
and matrix theory to the analysis of group structure, an
approach that Jack
232 Raven
French utilized quite effectively in his first analysis of power
structure (French,
1956).
In the Tuesday evening seminars at the Research Center for
Group Dynam-

ics, social pwwer in interpersonal and group influence became a
central theme.
Dorwin Cartwright recognized our collective efforts and offered
a unifying direc-
tion in his SPSSI Presidential Address, entitled "Power: A
Neglected Variable in
Social Psychology" (Cartwright, 1959).
Concepttmlizing the Bases of Power
It was within this context that Jack French and 1 began to meet
regularly to
discuss the development of a general theory of social power. We
defined social
power as "potential influence," which we should note was very
similar to
Lewin's—"the possibility of inducing forces." Our approach,
then, was to exam-
ine what sorts of resources a person might have to draw upon to
exercise influ-
ence. We began with a paper by Leon Festinger entitled "An
analysis of compli-
ant behavior" (Festinger, 1953). Festinger pointed out that in
certain occasions
social influence in behavior will occur even though the
influenced person would
not privately accept that change. Such, he said, would be
particularly likely
when he or she was threatened with punishment for
noncompliance and could not
leave the situation. In that case, of course, it would be
esf)ecially important that
his/her compliance or noncompliance could be observed by
those exerting influ-
ence. On the other hand, a person who desires to remain in that
social relation-

ship will not only comply but privately accept the change as
well. French would
note that the latter situation was similar to those of the
Harwood factory workers,
where tbe "induced force" from the group became an "own
force." The idea was
not entirely new, but it stimulated French and me to examine
numerous examples
of influence situations and their underlying dynamics.
We then discerned that there were two important dimensions
that determine
the form of influence or compliance: (a) social dependence and
(b) the impor-
tance of surveillance. We could readily think of examples in
which one person,
an influencing agent, could convince another with clear logic,
argument, or
information—where, let us say, a supervisor would give his/her
subordinates
good reasons why a change in behavior might lead to greater
productivity. Even
though it was initially the communication from the agent that
would produce the
change, that change would become socially iruiependent—the
target of influence
would completely accept (i.e., internalize) tbe change, and the
agent would
become inconsequential. We called that informational ir^uence.
I also felt that
the person who had the means to exert such influence could be
said to have
informational power—though I was not able to convince French
that the term
"power" was appropriate. (Apparently, my own informational
power was insuffi-

cient in this case.) :
Tbe Bases of Pbwer 233
The threat of punishment, as described by Festinger, would lead
to change
that continued to be socially dependent upon the agent, but, as
Festinger had
pointed out, surveillance was impwrtant for such influence to be
effective. For
example, the supervisor says, "Do the job this way or you will
be demoted." In
its potential, then, we referred to such a resource as coercive
power. But
wouldn't there be a similar situation if the agent promised some
sort of reward,
an increase in pay or privileges in exchange for compliance?
Reward power,
then, would also be socially dependent, with surveillance
important in order for
its effects to continue.
So now we had two bases of power, coercive and reward, in
which the
change was socially dependent and where surveillance was
important, and one,
information, which was socially independent and where
surveillance was unim-
portant. Could we conceive of bases of power in which
surveillance was wnim-
portant, but where resulting changes were still socially
dependent? We soon
thought of three additional bases of power which would have
such consequences:

legitimate power (what others have called "position power"),
expert power, and
referent power. The concept of "legitimate power" came from
Max Weber
(1947): "After all, I am your supervisor, and you should feel
some obligation to
do what 1 ask." Expert power has a long and distinguished
history in research on
opinion and attitude change: "Even if I may not explain the
reasons to you, you
must know that, after all, I know what is the best thing to do in
such circum-
stances." The concept of referent power came from Sherif
(1936), Newcomb
(1958), and Merton (1957), though we could also see it in
operation in many of
the studies of group norms described earlier. The target of
influence in such a
case would comply because of a sense of identification with the
influencing
agent, or a desire for such an identification. The influencing
agent then serves as
a model by which the target evaluates his/her behavior and
beliefs. The original
six bases of power, then, are presented in Table 1.
Though we originally drew our examples irom relationships
between super-
visors and subordinates, this typology has since been applied to
a number of
other areas of social interaction: parents influencing children
(Rollins & Thomas,
Tiible I. The Six Bases of Social Power
Basis of power

Coercion
Reward
Legitimacy
Expert
Reference
InformaCionaJ
Social dependence
of change
Socially dependent
Socially dependent
Socially dependent
Socially dependent
Socially dependent
Socially independent
Importance of
surveillance
Important
Important
Unimportant
Utiimportant
Unimportant
Unimportant

234 Raven
1975; Tashakkori, Thompson, & Simonian, 1989), husbands and
wives influenc-
ing another (Raven, Centers, & Rodrigues, 1975), children
influencing one
another (Schmidt & Raven, 1985a, 1985b; Schmidt, Raven,
Pastorelli, & Cap-
rara, 1993; Schmidt, Yanagihura, & Smith, 1987), teachers
influencing students
(Jamieson & Thomas, 1974), doctors influencing patients
(Rodin & Janis, 1982;
Raven, 1988; Raven & Litman-Adizes, 1986), salesmen
influencing customers
(Busch & Wilson, 1976; Gaski, 1986), franchisors influencing
franchisees (Hunt
& Nevin, 1974), couples in sexual encounters (McCormick,
1979), political
figures influencing one another (Gold & Raven, 1992; Raven,
1990; Rasinski,
Tyler, & Fridkin, 1985), and, in quite a few studies, influence
of supervisors in
organizational settings (e,g,, Abdalla, 1987; Ansari & Kapoor,
1987; Cobb,
1980; Cope, 1972; Frost & Stahelski, 1988; Hinkin &
Schreischeim, 1990;
Kabanoff, 1985; Melia-Navarro & Peiro-Silla, 1984; Podsakoff
& Schriescheim,
1985; Shaw & Condelli, 1986; Sinha & Singh-Sengupta, 1991;
Stahelski, Frost,
& Patch, 1989; Student, 1968).
Subsequent Development of the Couceptual Framework
of the Bases of Power
Further Differentiation and Elaboration

In the years that followed, the bases of social power model has
developed
substantially, benefiting from research and theoretical
developments in various
related fields—cognitive social psychology, attitude and
attitude change, and
organizational psychology. Though we still believe that most
social influence can
be understood in terms of the six bases of power, some of these
bases have been
elaborated and further differentiated (see Table 2),
Coercive power and reward power: Personal fonns. Going
beyond tangible
rewards and real physical threats, we have had to recognize that
personal approv-
al from someone whom we like can result in quite powerful
reward power; and
rejection or disapproval from someone whom we really like can
serve as a basis
for powerful coercive power (Raven & Kruglanski, 1970). There
is some indica-
tion that the more personal forms, which have sometimes been
called "attraction
power," are more likely to be associated with women than with
men (Broverman
e t a l , , 1972; Johnson, 1976a, 1976b),
Legitimate power: Reciprocity, equity, and dependence. We
have had to go
beyond the legitimate power that comes from one's formal
position and recog-
nize other forms of legitimate power that may be more subtle,
which draw on
social norms such as (a) the legitimate power of reciprocity ("I

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