Journal of Workplace Learning Employee engagement and aut oet hnography: being and st udying self Sally Anne Sambrook Natalie Jones Clair Doloriert Article information: To cite this document: Sally Anne Sambrook Natalie Jones Clair Doloriert , (2014),"Employee engagement and autoethnography: being and studying self", Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 26 Iss 3/4 pp. 172 - 187 Permanent link t o t his document : http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/JWL-09-2013-0072 Downloaded by BANGOR UNIVERSITY At 01:02 02 May 2016 (PT) Downloaded on: 02 May 2016, At : 01: 02 (PT) Ref erences: t his document cont ains ref erences t o 73 ot her document s. 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Yet, employee engagement is essentially an individual concept, concerning self, and this highly personal dimension fails to be captured in positivistic surveys. This paper offers a novel methodology in an attempt to address this deficit. Design/methodology/approach – This complex concept needs to be studied from a more interpretivist and ethnographic angle, acknowledging that EE exists within a cultural context. The paper proposes the use of a contemporary, and somewhat contentious, form of ethnography, autoethnography (AE) that weaves together the researcher’s personal and participants’ experiences to illuminate the phenomenon. Findings – This paper briefly reviews extant literature on employee engagement, explains autoethnography and argues that AE is a highly suitable method to capture both the individual and social nature of self in employee engagement. Research limitations/implications – To understand how employee engagement works, we need to get at the depth of the concept, and the paper offers an innovative methodological contribution to achieve this. To date, this approach has received limited attention and only minimal anecdotal evidence is presented to support the argument for AE. However, there is substantial scope for further research adopting this novel, collaborative approach. Practical implications – An autoethnographic approach provides both emic (insider) and etic (outsider) perspectives on the phenomenon, thus harnessing both the experiences of those involved in AE initiatives (e.g. HR practitioners managing EE and employees being engaged) but also the researcher’s experiences and interpretations of being engaged in their work, to elicit more rich, layered insights. Such nuanced understanding can help facilitate more appropriate, authentic and realistic interventions to harness employees’ whole self and engagement. Originality/value – Autoethnography provides an innovative approach to studying employee engagement, offering an appropriate alternative to quantitative, snap-shot studies and is more in keeping with the founding scholar’s intentions for research on this topic. Keywords Culture, Context, Autoethnography, Self, Qualitative research, Employee engagement Paper type Research paper Journal of Workplace Learning Vol. 26 No. 3/4, 2014 pp. 172-187 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1366-5626 DOI 10.1108/JWL-09-2013-0072 Introduction William Kahn (2010), arguably the pioneer of engagement research, has described employee engagement (EE) as “an enormously appealing concept” (p. 20). Despite Kahn (1990) employing ethnographic methods to develop his concept of personal engagement at work and recommending more than 20 years ago that more qualitative research was needed (Kahn, 1992), little has followed. In this paper, we argue that understanding of employee engagement in the workplace would benefit from a novel Downloaded by BANGOR UNIVERSITY At 01:02 02 May 2016 (PT) research approach associated with qualitative methods, namely autoethnography (AE). More employee engagement has been offered as a solution to the search for sustainable economic growth since the worldwide financial crisis of 2008 (MacLeod and Clarke, 2009). Employee engagement is particularly popular among practitioners and HR professional bodies in the UK and USA, and has been supported by national governments, such as the UK (UK Government, 2011). From an academic perspective, until recently, it has been almost exclusively studied by psychologists. Employee engagement is now receiving increasing attention from management (Arrowsmith and Parker, 2013; Jenkins and Delbridge, 2013; Purcell, 2012) and workplace learning scholars (Billett and Choy, 2013; Bryson et al., 2006; Molino et al., 2013; Shuck and Wollard, 2010; Shuck, 2011; Shuck et al., 2011). Yet, most contemporary research employs positivist survey methods (see for example Truss et al., 2006) and fails to capture the essence of engagement as a dynamic, deeply personal state (Kahn, 1990): . . . a scuba diving instructor [. . .] spent a great deal of time with the students both in and out of class and worked to share with them his personal philosophy about the ocean and the need to take care of its resources. In doing so, he experienced moments of pure personal engagement. He described one [. . .] expedition in which he employed his self physically, darting about checking gear and leading the dive; cognitively, in his vigilant awareness of divers, weather and marine life; and emotionally, in empathizing with the fear and excitement of the young divers. He also expressed himself – the dimensions of himself that loved the ocean and wanted others to do so as well [. . .] talking about he wonders of the ocean [. . .] he was simultaneously fully discharging his role and expressing a preferred self (pp. 700-1). According to Kahn, when personal engagement occurs, notions of self and work can be difficult to distinguish and are integrated with each other. Being engaged in work, including the work of academic researchers, can simply mean being one’s authentic self. For example, in Sally’s research, she studies topics of interest and relevance to herself. She has always been interested in learning at work, including her own learning, and being a researcher of workplace learning is deeply associated with her sense of self, as a developer. Often, when she is engaged in meaningful research, it hardly seems like work. This begs the question of what is meaningful research or work. For her, this means engaging in interpretive studies, attempting to find the meaning of complex, subjective topics. This includes employing critical and ethnographic perspectives on workplace learning and employee engagement, and allowing her own voice to be heard, revealing the hand she has played in crafting the research story. While some scientists would object to this (Coffey, 1999; Atkinson, 2006) it is increasingly acknowledged that researchers bring some (if not all) of their selves into their studies. Rather than viewing subjectivity and deep personal involvement as weaknesses, encouraging researchers to consider their own engagement can contribute more understanding of how others connect with their work roles and with learning, as we show later in the paper through a case study of recently completed doctoral level research which examined employee engagement using the autoethnographic approach ( Jones, 2012). Some workplace scholars, beginning to recognise the value of more interpretive approaches to studying who people are and what they do at work (Arrowsmith and Parker, 2013; Jenkins and Delbridge, 2013), are now returning to ethnographic techniques. Watson (2011, pp. 205-6) states that “Ethnography is most usefully defined as a style of social science writing which draws on the writer’s close observation of and Being and studying self 173 JWL 26,3/4 Downloaded by BANGOR UNIVERSITY At 01:02 02 May 2016 (PT) 174 involvement with people in a particular social setting and relates the words spoken and the practices observed or experienced to the overall cultural framework within which they occurred.” In our view, there remains a substantial gap in the use of innovative forms of ethnography that “get at the depth” (Kahn, 1992, p. 344) of contemporary managerial and workplace learning issues in general and employee engagement in particular. Autoethnography (AE) is one such innovative form; an emerging style of social science writing which not only draws on the researcher’s observations and involvement in a particular social setting, but also includes the researcher’s own personal experiences of the cultural phenomenon being studied. Therefore, first, we introduce the concept of EE, then review engagement studies, focusing particularly on their research methods, noting their widespread reliance on survey methods. Second, we introduce AE and consider its utility in researching the intimately personal and dynamic nature of engagement. We make two contributions to the existing knowledge base. First we identify the limitations of traditional approaches, dominated by highly quantitative, snap-shot surveys which fail to capture the individual and evolving experiences of engagement and disengagement. Second, we propose AE is particularly well suited to getting “at the depth” of this workplace phenomenon, weaving together participant and researcher experiences and accounts to yield greater insights. AE, we believe, represents a research approach very much in keeping with Kahn’s original research intentions that is well placed to inform a more interpretivist theory and practice of employee engagement. A brief review of employee engagement literature Employee engagement is a relatively recent term but draws on the longer established (and sometimes overlapping) concepts of personal and work engagement. The term “employee engagement” first formally appeared in academic literature in 2002 (Harter et al., 2002), defined as “the individual’s involvement and satisfaction as well as enthusiasm for work” (p. 269). Yet, it is generally accepted that the term was initially informed by the concept of personal engagement at work developed by William Kahn (1990), who described how individuals can experience a sense of connection and also disconnection (“disengagement”) from their roles at work. We reviewed existing literature, and found 14 academic and non-academic reviews of the literature on employee, work and personal engagement published between 2007 and 2013 (4-consulting (2007), Christian and Slaughter (2007), Christian et al. (2011), Cole et al. (2011), Halbesleben (2010), Jeung (2012), Kim et al. (2013), Kular et al. (2008), Macey and Schneider (2008), Mauno et al. (2010), Shuck (2011), Shuck and Wollard (2010), Simpson (2009), Wollard and Shuck (2011)), summarised in the following. In the reviews we examined, there are numerous definitions of employee engagement and several streams of research within the broader body of work on engagement: work engagement as the antithesis of burnout (psychology informed); work engagement as a separate construct (psychology informed); personal engagement (sociology informed); and employee engagement (business and management informed) (Simpson, 2009). These streams implicitly share the unitarist view that engagement is a positive and desirable state for employees with positive results for organisations. In addition, very few have considered the engagement of managers and HR professionals, including those who design, facilitate and participate in engagement initiatives. While Kahn’s concept focused on the relationship between an individual Downloaded by BANGOR UNIVERSITY At 01:02 02 May 2016 (PT) and their work role, others have identified that employee engagement can also be targeted towards the organisation as well as a job (Saks, 2006), and thus potentially linked with workplace learning and improving business performance. It is this aspect that has spawned current rising governmental, consultancy and managerial interest (MacLeod and Clarke, 2009; APSC, 2012; CIPD, 2012). Macey and Schneider (2008, p. 3) note, “the notion of employee engagement [. . .] has been heavily marketed by HR consulting firms who offer advice on how it can be created and leveraged.” Research for the Society of Human Resource Management, the professional body for HRM in the USA, argues engagement is constructed through key HR activities, including recruitment and selection, human resource development, reward, and performance management (Vance, 2006). Unfortunately, this research conflates the constructs of engagement and commitment/job satisfaction, and adopts a narrow management centric perspective. It is also predicated on studies of employee engagement produced by management consultancies to assist HR professionals manage (promote, facilitate, monitor) engagement but with little supporting empirical evidence. Academic contributions have been more rigorous but less pragmatic. Scientific knowledge produced by psychology-based researchers aims exclusively at understanding the construct or state of engagement with limited regard for how to practically better facilitate and manage this (Albrecht, 2010; Leiter and Maslach, 2010). This does little to appreciate the more subtle, discretionary self-oriented aspects of EE which are, in our view, at the heart of Kahn’s definition. Thus, a conceptual tension exists between being engaged and managing engagement. Yet, this is ignored in much of the academic and practitioner literature, based on a simplistic, non-conflicted view of the employment relationship (Harter et al., 2002; Gatenby et al., 2009; Alfes et al., 2010; Shuck and Reio, 2011; Gourlay et al., 2012) where “. . . two way promises and commitments between employers and staff are understood and are fulfilled” (MacLeod and Clarke, 2009, p. 9). In “mainstream” management studies, adopting a unitarist perspective, employees and managers are assumed to share interests and the benefits for staff from employee engagement initiatives are beyond question (MacLeod and Clarke, 2009). Scholars associated with pluralist and “critical” management studies challenge assumptions found in mainstream research that employment relations and the link between the management of the workforce and performance are unproblematic (George, 2010). Adopting a more critical perspective, the relationship between managers and the workforce is subject to “two seemingly conflicting requirements: to cut costs to the bone and yet at the same time promote the commitment necessary for innovation” (Sisson and Purcell, 2010, p. 84). It is also important to note that defining employee engagement is problematic. While employee engagement both as an academic concept and business and management issue has emerged relatively recently, the search for increased commitment and satisfaction at work is a long standing issue and many consultants blur these concepts. Indeed, Schaufeli and Bakker (2010, p. 12) are one set of authors that have participated in the debate about whether EE is a new concept or simply “old wine in new bottles”. In the research that we report on later, we found that employee engagement was conflated with organisational commitment and organisational citizenship behaviour by senior managers, human resource professionals and front line staff ( Jones, 2012). The experience of EE at the personal Being and studying self 175 JWL 26,3/4 Downloaded by BANGOR UNIVERSITY At 01:02 02 May 2016 (PT) 176 level, and regard for Kahn’s approach to both the concept and to future research, remains under-examined. From the original personal focus (Kahn, 1990), additional units of analysis are sought (Macey and Schneider, 2008), specifically at work unit level (Simpson, 2009; Shuck and Wollard, 2010) as well as within person (Christian et al., 2011), with calls for more multi-level studies: Further research should focus on the natural-seeming links between what organisations do and what individuals contribute, how they overlap [. . .] understanding the dynamics of what organizations consider supportive versus what individuals perceive as support could be key to enhancing the way organizations communicate to their employees (Wollard and Shuck, 2011, p. 438). This hints at a shift towards a more pluralist agenda, expanding interest to include the effect of changes in the workplace on individual level engagement, e.g. insecurities and stress resulting from downsizing and restructuring (Mauno et al., 2010; Wollard and Shuck, 2011) and the implications of the interface of work life with non work life (Rothbard, 2001; Halbesleben, 2010). There are also calls for more research on activities being undertaken within organisations to improve employee engagement (Kular et al., 2008, Mauno et al., 2010; Halbesleben, 2010; Christian et al., 2011) which is now starting to receive attention (Truss et al., 2013). There are several conceptual models that have sought to identify links between conditions, characteristics and consequences of engagement in the academic and practitioner literatures (Kahn, 1990, 1992; Saks, 2006; Macey and Schneider, 2008; Shuck et al., 2011; Robinson et al., 2004; MacLeod and Clarke, 2009; Alfes et al., 2010; Christian et al., 2011). It is interesting that scholars have sought to develop new rather than test or extend longer standing frameworks such as Kahn’s (1990). However, this might be a reflection of researchers’ attempts to express and promote their selves through their research, such is the pressure to perform (and publish) within the academy! In terms of research methods employed to examine EE, researchers note that cross sectional research methods using closed question survey instruments have dominated (Simpson, 2009; Mauno et al., 2010; Shuck, 2013; Kim et al., 2013), using self-reported data (Christian and Slaughter, 2007). Some scholars have called for more longitudinal designs and while the number of longitudinal studies is growing (Halbesleben, 2010) they continue to gather quantitative data. For example, the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale is the dominant instrument for collecting quantitative data from employees regarding their sense of work engagement (Mauno et al., 2010). But, how can responses to an annual one-off self-report questionnaire augment our understanding of what it means to be engaged, who and what facilitates this, and why and when an employee engages at/with work? In terms of future research, more lagged research designs that collect data over longer periods of time are recommended (Simpson, 2009; Mauno et al., 2010; Christian et al., 2011; Cole et al., 2011). Beyond temporal issues, context should also be considered. Much research has taken place in the US or Europe (Kular et al., 2008) and in private sector settings, so examination of other cultures is encouraged (Kim et al., 2013) as well as different types of industries, occupations and workplaces (Mauno et al., 2010; Wollard and Shuck, 2011). There have been long standing calls for more qualitative research on employee engagement (Kahn, 1992; Shuck, 2013; Kim et al., 2013) yet little has been forthcoming: Downloaded by BANGOR UNIVERSITY At 01:02 02 May 2016 (PT) “few studies [. . .] moved beyond the prevailing survey methodology and [. . .] is quantitatively heavy” (Shuck, 2013, p. 4). There remains limited qualitative research, and few very few ethnographies since Kahn’s examination of two workplaces in the US, creating a substantial gap in understanding of EE. Interview based studies have been employed to examine the meaning of employee engagement among HR professionals (Luisis-Lynd and Myers, 2011) and among front line employees in a multinational company (Shuck et al., 2011). In conclusion, we agree with Christian et al. (2011) that, “as is common in emerging areas of study, engagement research has undergone growing pains” (p. 125). Despite consensus that employee engagement comprises a multi-dimensional and dynamic state that individuals experience positively, few researchers have sought to design their research in ways to reflect either multi-dimensionality within person or between levels in an organisation or sector. It appears that normal science in employee engagement research is to utilise methods which concentrate on identifying the nature and (causal) impact of antecedents on the state of individual level engagement and its links to consequences – generally operationalised positively (e.g. task behaviour, more OCB) rather than negatively (e.g. work intensification, job related stress) – to generate linear frameworks. The focus has been on the use of quantitative methods, using established Likert-type scales, to measure engagement. Researchers have lamented the dependence on “subjective” data, albeit engagement as a personal state is likely to be highly subjective (based on personal experience), on employees’ strength and frequency of their sense of engagement with their work and that: [. . .] the development of a conceptual model that integrates other objective measures at different performance levels (e.g. team performance and corporate financial performance) could make a substantial improvement to supplementing the missing piece of research in engagement and performance (Kim et al., 2013, p. 18). Kahn’s conceptual framework (1992) could provide such a model and has been offered by some scholars as an appropriate one (Shuck et al., 2011). Kahn’s concept of personal engagement at work Kahn defined personal engagement at work as “the simultaneous employment and expression of a person’s ‘preferred self’ in task behaviours that promote connections to work and to others, personal presence (physical, cognitive and emotional) and active full role performances” (Kahn, 1990, p. 700). Kahn argued that in a personally engaged state, an individual is able to bring all of their self that they wish into the work role. Thus, engaged employees are: . . . psychologically present, fully there, attentive, feeling, connected, integrated and focused in their role performances. They are open to themselves and others, connected to work and others, and bring their complete selves to perform (Rich et al., 2010, p. 619). This highlights the importance of understanding self in EE. As well as identifying the characteristics of the state of engagement, Kahn identified three psychological conditions that influence an individual’s willingness to engage with their work: meaningfulness, safety and availability: Psychological meaningfulness is the sense of return on investments of the self-in-role performances, psychological safety is the sense of being able to show and employ the self Being and studying self 177 JWL 26,3/4 Downloaded by BANGOR UNIVERSITY At 01:02 02 May 2016 (PT) 178 without fear of negative consequences, and psychological availability is the sense of possessing physical, emotional and psychological resources for investing the self in role performances (Kahn, 1990, p. 705). Again, understanding self appears crucial in engagement research, and this could extend to researchers themselves, not just the employees they are studying. Bledlow et al. (2011) argue that work engagement varies significantly within individuals over time and a driver of these variations is the day-to-day events employees encounter, including daily interactions with their managers and opportunities to develop or employ self (or not). We anticipate academics (as well as managers and HR professionals) also experience this same transient sense of engagement, and our own experiences can help understand those of other employees in other work contexts. This draws attention to the more dynamic and transitional status of engagement, rather than simply as an on-off phenomenon, captured in annual organisational surveys. As Sayer (2000, p. 14) argues, “The conventional impulse to prove causation by gathering (quantitative) data on regularities [. . .] is therefore misguided”. Despite many researchers citing and describing the characteristics of Kahn’s model of personal engagement at work and the psychological conditions (meaningfulness, safety and availability), few have developed his work (May et al., 2004; Rich et al., 2010). There have been no discussions of the research implications of this framework despite Kahn himself suggesting how future research on personal engagement should be approached. When William Kahn stated in 1992 that creating conditions at work for employees to engage was difficult, complex work, he might also have been describing the process of undertaking research on employee engagement. In his paper exploring the concept of psychological presence at work, Kahn (1992) identifies a research agenda for getting “at the depth of the relation between the individual and the role” (p. 344), focusing on: (1) The person in role as the unit of analysis. (2) The particular moments of role performances and people’s immediate experiences and behaviours in those moments. (3) Organizations as creating contexts in which various factors shape rather than determine individual choices and behaviours. Kahn noted that, “To get at that depth requires ways (and therefore research methods) of making people accessible within the research process itself, such that they collaborate in that process of uncovering and examining their experiences and behaviours in particular situations” (Kahn, 1992). Kahn recommended an approach to research characterised as follows: (1) Case studies – of the interaction between person and role at both individual and organisational levels, (2) Multiple levels – that studies should examine the experiences and implications of personal engagement at varying levels from the micro (in-person and individual) through team and up to the macro (organisation) level, (3) Collection of qualitative data. The doctoral research that we summarise later represents an attempt to address Kahn’s agenda for engagement scholarship by employing case study methods within Downloaded by BANGOR UNIVERSITY At 01:02 02 May 2016 (PT) the framework of an autoethnographic approach which prioritised qualitative methods. Kahn argues “The manager and consultant cannot simply impose a given process or employ given tools to enable the presence of system members. They must make a fundamental shift in how they think about workers and their attachments to work and organisations” (Kahn, 1992). Engagement researchers also need to make a fundamental shift in how they approach employee engagement research and their attachments to mainly quantitative methods as these are not designed to “get at the depth” (Kahn, 1992, p. 344). If workers are “deep underlying wells of energies that they may haul up, hand over fist” (Kahn, 1992), we have to, as Watson (2011) asserts, be willing to do “intensive type of close-observational or participative research that is central to ethnographic research” (p. 204). By calling on the experiences of the researcher as well as other participants, autoethnographic research gives researchers an additional opportunity to have “first hand experience of the aspect of the life they are studying” (Watson, 2011, p. 212). With researchers calling for studies of cultures (Kim et al., 2013), ethnographic research would seem to be an ideal research approach to address this gap. We propose that AE offers some opportunity for the individual and organisational levels in employee engagement to be transcended as Watson (2011) states that “ethnography is an anthropological or sociological activity rather than a psychological one” (p. 213), by enabling the researcher to access, to some degree, their own if not others’ subjective experiences (Weber, 1949 in Watson, 2011). What is autoethnography? Autoethnography is a relatively recent development of ethnography, with subtle distinctions between the early notion of the slightly separated auto-ethnography (Hayano, 1979), the closer-linked auto/ethnography (Reed-Danahay, 1997) and the fully synthesised autoethnography (Bochner and Ellis, 2003). Autoethnography is most simply defined by Reed-Danahay (1997, p. 145) as research that connects the personal to the cultural, placing the self within a social context. Autoethnography has been described as a research approach that consists of “. . . highly personalised accounts that draw on the experience of the author/researcher for the purposes of extending sociological understanding” (Sparkes, 2002 in Wall, 2008, p. 38). The researcher selects from their personal experiences (auto) in addition to collecting data from and about others (ethno) which are analysed and constructed through the writing process to understand a wider culture (graphy) (Wall, 2006). The precise nature of an autoethnography can vary, depending on which of these three elements is in focus (Wall, 2006). Perhaps due to its position “at the boundaries of accepted scholarly inquiry . . . ” (Foster et al., 2006) autoethnography has only been used sparingly. Autoethnography is not without practical difficulty nor immune from philosophical debate or outright disgust (see for example, Coffey, 1999; Atkinson, 2006). The seminal works of Ellis and Bochner (2000, 2006) advocate an evocative approach, stirring the reader to be moved by the tale and reflect on the phenomenon themselves; yet, objecting to this, Anderson (2006) urges a more analytical approach to yield greater sociological understanding; Holman Jones (2005) advances a more critical-political approach where the purpose is change; while Learmonth and Humphreys (2012) compromise with their suggestion for an accommodating amalgamation of any of these. In writing about the “self”, autoethnography can expose the hidden aspects of Being and studying self 179 JWL 26,3/4 Downloaded by BANGOR UNIVERSITY At 01:02 02 May 2016 (PT) 180 research, seldom revealed in traditional studies. As Humphreys (2005, p. 852) notes, it is “unusual for academics to expose their doubts, fears and potential weaknesses,” yet these shape our research agendas and accounts. As a contemporary form, autoethnography potentially helps address the crisis of representation in traditional ethnography, articulating the voices of all those implicated in the research – the sponsors, gatekeepers, researchers, and participants, whether managing engagement or being engaged. To illustrate this, we now share some personal experiences. Sally and Clair recently supervised Natalie’s autoethnographic doctoral thesis examining employee engagement in the public sector in the UK. The purpose of the study was to explore how employee engagement was conceived, managed and experienced by a range of stakeholders: senior managers, line managers, human resource specialists and non managerial staff, including the research student, who formerly worked as a middle manager, in the public sector. It is important to explain that the study began as a traditional ethnography. As noted in an early excerpt from her research journal, Natalie said: “I met with Sally and Clair today. Went on about autoethnography again. If they think I’m going to indulge in all that navel-gazing again, they’ve got another thing coming. They do not know me” (Jones, 2012). This illuminates the often sceptical perceptions and prejudices of AE. Yet, as her study developed, she expressed the intense meaning acquired in connecting personal aspects of her former managerial role and her own experiences and her findings of the wider managerial issues associated with her research topic, employee engagement. Traditional ethnographic fieldwork was undertaken over eleven months in a small public sector organisation operating in the health and social care field, where a management led employee engagement initiative was observed and managerial and non managerial staff were interviewed individually and in groups regarding their understanding and management of employee engagement as a concept and their experiences of the “in-house” initiative. Observation took place of both the formal elements of the “in house” engagement initiative as well as informal meetings and conversations with staff and 15 in-depth interviews. Auto data comprised recollections of five years’ work experience where the researcher experienced both engagement with and disengagement from work. Data were analysed concurrently with data collection, with data being categorised into groups and themes in order to identify similarities and differences in conceptions, management and experiences of employee engagement. It emerged that it was the researcher’s earlier struggles with her own personal engagement at work that initially spawned the project. Combining auto data with a traditional ethnographic study meant the researcher contributed new knowledge on the dynamism and transience of employee engagement, the feelings of loss and grief about losing a sense of personal engagement at work that had once been very strong, and how difficult it was to connect personal attempts at rebuilding engagement with those being advanced by the organisation. Employee engagement, through the researcher’s own eyes, appeared anything but the “win-win” (MacLeod and Clarke, 2009) for organisations and employees so often advanced in the management consultancy and mainstream management literatures (Harter et al., 2002; CIPD, 2012). Natalie drew on her own experiences, not to dominate the study but to offer fresh and additional insights and understandings of the other participants’ accounts. Downloaded by BANGOR UNIVERSITY At 01:02 02 May 2016 (PT) During this time, Sally also re-examined her own engagement with her work as an academic, both teaching and researching workplace learning. This profound epiphany raised a number of questions: was she over-engaged (a work-aholic?), were her colleagues under/non-engaged (perhaps displaying a healthy form of work (dis)engagement?) and who, if anyone, was monitoring and managing this? Sally has always been passionate about her work, but was this at the expense of other aspects of her personal life? She is happily married with no children and her partner works shifts so often she finds herself working weekends and evenings, just because she can! Her work has become her hobby, and an extension of herself. And so, quite selfishly, does she expect colleagues to reciprocate, when they have numerous other opportunities – and personal resources – to be their selves outside of work? Also, to what extent, is it possible to understand – and therefore perhaps manage – others’ selves at work? As Watson (2011) notes, “trying to get inside people’s experiences or poke about inside their heads and hearts” (p. 213) is not a fruitful exercise. Yet, we need to delve a little deeper than snap-shot annual surveys to generate more sophisticated understanding of employee engagement, both as an individual state (the self being engaged) and organisational device (HR and managers managing engagement). This, we hope, will help individual employees and their representatives to consider how much of their engagement at work is of their own choice and how much is being imposed or expected (by themselves and others). Conclusions Many engagement researchers cite Kahn as an important source of knowledge on the characteristics of engagement and the personal and organisational factors that can facilitate it, yet few have considered the implications of his recommendations for their own research designs. Understanding the “workforce engagement profile” (Alfes et al., 2010, p. 55) and measuring engagement with an employee survey is often recommended as the most appropriate way to begin to manage employee engagement at the organisational level by both practitioner and scholarly writers (MacLeod and Clarke, 2009; Towers Perrin, 2012; Best Companies, 2011). Yet, this fails to understand how, when and why workers might be engaged. To address this, we have proposed that autoethnographic methods might help resolve some of the contradictions and weaknesses inherent in traditional quantitative studies. We have advocated that autoethnographic studies are well suited to addressing long-standing and contemporary research agendas for employee engagement. They can relate to Kahn’s seminal research in several ways. Employing “auto” and “ethno” data enables researchers to consider both the psychological (personal) and the sociological (organisational) elements of engagement, integrating the researcher’s and participants’ accounts of being their selves at work. For example, as well as researching others’ engagement, we suggest further autoethnographic research is required to examine academics’ engagement in their own Higher Education work contexts. Autoethnographic methods are also likely to be suitable to other studies relevant to workplace learning, such as motivation to learn, learning transfer, job satisfaction and so forth, from the various perspectives of academic researchers, HRD practitioners, managers and learners/trainees, especially those senior and middle managers who are “engaged” in commissioning and delivering EE initiatives within organisations. Being and studying self 181 JWL 26,3/4 Downloaded by BANGOR UNIVERSITY At 01:02 02 May 2016 (PT) 182 We make two inter-related contributions to advance the knowledge base of employee engagement. First, we have highlighted the limitations of the dominant survey-based “surface” approach that currently dominates academic and consultancy-led research and (re-)emphasised the importance of a qualitative perspective for understanding the highly personal, discretionary and dynamic nature of employee engagement, in keeping with Kahn’s original work and intentions for research on this topic. Building on this, our second contribution is to illustrate how and why autoethnography is an entirely appropriate alternative method to penetrate and illuminate the otherwise neglected deep, emotional experiences of engagement. The AE approach represents a highly suitable response to capturing both the individual and social nature of employee engagement, and enables the researcher’s voice and experience to complement (but not dominate) the participants’, thus offering insider (emic) and outsider (etic) (Headland et al., 1990) perspectives. We hope this stimulates other researchers wishing to explore this topic from a distinctive methodological perspective. Kahn himself stated that “conditions are useful, and correct, as far as they go, but they do not go nearly far enough [. . .] my work over the last decade has involved [. . .] identifying more closely why engagement is lacking even when the right levers are being pulled” (Kahn, 2013, p. 1). Like other contemporary researchers, we argue there is value in rediscovering Kahn’s framework of personal engagement at work to inform future research. Kahn’s work not only offers a model that is worthy of further investigation in different workplace settings and socio-economic contexts but also offers valuable suggestions on preferred research approaches. It is disappointing that so little contemporary research on employee engagement has taken up Kahn’s (1992) recommendations for research approaches that are able to “get at the depth” (p. 344) of engagement. We argue that employing AE might represent somewhat of a rebalancing of research towards meeting Kahn’s intentions and we encourage other researchers to do the same. AE clearly has potential to resonate with EE, linking back to Kahn’s notion of the personal, authentic self at work. AE can collaboratively construct different forms of knowing engagement, from insider and outsider perspectives, drawing on different selves at work. To conclude, we reiterate both William Kahn’s call for more qualitative research generally and Tony Watson’s call for more ethnographic research in particular to play a more prominent role to understand “how things work,” with particular reference to employee engagement scholarship. This might begin to help advance a more nuanced and contextualised understanding to get at the depth of this complex phenomenon. 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(2002), “Employee engagement and manager self-efficacy”, Journal of Management Development, Vol. 21 No. 5, pp. 376-387. Downloaded by BANGOR UNIVERSITY At 01:02 02 May 2016 (PT) About the authors Sally Anne Sambrook is Professor of Human Resource Development, and formerly Deputy Head and Director of Postgraduate Studies in Business and Management at Bangor Business School. Sally Anne Sambrook is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: sally.sambrook@bangor.ac.uk Natalie Jones is a recent Doctoral Student at Bangor Business School and now employed at the ESRC. Clair Doloriert is Lecturer in Knowledge Management at Bangor Business School and affiliated with Centrum Catholica University, Peru. To purchase reprints of this article please e-mail: reprints@emeraldinsight.com Or visit our web site for further details: www.emeraldinsight.com/reprints Being and studying self 187