Peter Cammock

What drives organisational engagement?: A case study on trust, justice perceptions and withdrawal attitudes

Purpose - Past research has found meaningful differences between job and organisational engagement. However, research to date has mainly focused on job engagement, whereas the construct of organisational engagement has been largely neglected. The purpose of this study was to investigate the antecedents of organisational engagement and its influence on withdrawal attitudes. Design/methodology/approach - Using an on-line survey, the authors investigated employees’ perceptions of fairness and trust in senior management, 12 months prior to the measurement of organisational engagement and withdrawal attitudes. The study was conducted in a professional services public organisation, characterised by frequent change and uncertainty. Findings - The authors showed that perceptions of procedural justice and trust in senior management predicted organisational engagement 12 months later. In addition, organisational engagement partially mediated the relationship between procedural justice perceptions, trust in senior management, and withdrawal attitudes. Practical implications - The authors’ research suggests that monitoring and influencing employees’ levels of engagement can benefit organisations, and that leaders in particular can influence employees’ level of engagement. Indeed, the present research showed that employees who had trust in senior management and felt that they had a voice in the organisation showed higher levels of engagement and lower intentions to exit the organisation. Originality/value - This research contributes to our understanding of the drivers of engagement, and demonstrates the importance of organisational-level, in addition to job-level engagement.

Public leadership development facilitation and the crossroads blues

The article seeks to make sense of the choices facing the public leadership development facilitator, in design and in-the-moment programme decisions. The challenge is posited as one of situating knowledge of facilitation practices in a critical relationship with the public sector leadership literature and the critical leadership development literature. The article positions public leadership development facilitation as sitting within three pressing dilemmas, or crossroads, concerning public leadership theory, critical leadership development scholarship and facilitation scholarship. A narrative ethnographic methodology is adopted to explore the constructions of a specific public sector leadership development facilitator as a means of analysing facilitator choices in action. An interpretation of how the facilitator frames and constructs public leadership in relation to the constructions of participants is offered. The article situates facilitator choices as highly political, sitting contextually between the idealism of the public sector literature and the social identifications of participants. The authors offer two dominant forms of facilitation choices (framing and adaptive) as a heuristic for facilitators, practitioners and scholars who wish to reflect further on the role of leadership development in the public realm.