Place (and time) of engagement

People interact in places, and behave and engage differently in different places.  Imagine the different engagement between a lecturer and students in a lecture theatre, and engaged behaviour in a chemistry lab.  Place influences engagement.

Consider place to include material objects and time. Nonaka and Konno described Ba (equivalent to "place" in English) as a shared space for emerging relationships (Nonaka and Konno, 1998). Environment is the place in which people engage, and it includes time and the material objects with which people interact, like science lab benches.

1. Physical proximity enhances learning (Skerlavaj 2006) and the physical structure of a room can allow easy engagement. For example, round tables are more indicative of a democratic approach to listening and decision making than an auditorium with fixed seating facing forward (Block, 2000: 277). Sturdy et al suggested that consultants and clients could cross or blur boundaries by meeting in other than at routine places and times, in liminal spaces, spaces where institutionalised or cultural rules, norms and routines are suspended (Sturdy et al., 2006: 932), like hospital waiting rooms or car parks, or the water-cooler.
2. Materials invite people to do something. Orlikowski (2006: 465) suggests that “the materiality of infrastructures, spaces and technological artefacts structure […] knowledgeability” thus extending place to include other material objects. Materiality is the context in which people interact and engage.  Material objects include shared physical tangibles and intangibles such as time. Objects that are shared and sharable across different key parties are boundary objects (Carlile, 2002, Bechky, 2003, Star and Griesemer, 1989) and can help solve problems. Skovgaard-Smith observed consultants facilitating discussion using flipchart material, which provided a tangible aspect of consultancy service to the group. Thus a place affords combination capability.  
3. Time is another aspect of environment, crucial in combination with space (Maaninen-Olsson and Müllern, 2009). Orlikowski, using a scaffolding metaphor, for knowing suggests that “Scaffolds are emergent – they are erected over time, changing in form and function, as needed to continue supporting the changing scale and scope of the element(s) being built over time” (Orlikowski, 2006: 462) Such scaffolds of knowing afford a temporary stability (Orlikowski, 2006). 

In summary, aspects of environment that are likely to be relevant to understanding engagement are shared place, time and material objects.

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BECHKY, B. A. (2003) 'Object Lessons: Workplace Artifacts as Representations of Occupational Jurisdiction'. American Journal of Sociology, 109, 720-752.
BLOCK, P. (2000) Flawless consulting: a guide to getting your expertise used, 2 ed, Jossey-Bass/Fpeiffer.
CARLILE, P. R. (2002) 'A Pragmatic View of Knowledge and Boundaries: Boundary Objects in New Product Development'. Organization Science, 13, 442-455.
MAANINEN-OLSSON, E. & MÜLLERN, T. (2009) 'A contextual understanding of projects--The importance of space and time'. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 25, 327-339.
NONAKA, I. & KONNO, N. (1998) 'The Concept of "Ba": building a foundation for knowledge creation '. California Management Review, 40, 40-54.
ORLIKOWSKI, W. J. (2006) 'Material knowing: the scaffolding of human knowledgeability'. European Journal of Information Systems, 15, 460-466.
SKERLAVAJ, M. & DIMÖVSKI, V. (2006) 'Social Network Approach To Organizational Learning'. Journal of Applied Business Research, 22, 89-98.
SMITH, I. S. (2010) Materializing the Organization - The role of consultants in processes of objectification. Academy of Management Annual Conference Montreal, Canada.
STAR, S. L. & GRIESEMER, J. R. (1989) 'Institutional Ecology, 'Translations' and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39'. Social Studies of Science (Sage), 19, 387-420.
STURDY, A., SCHWARZ, M. & SPICER, A. (2006) 'Guess who's coming to dinner? Structures and uses of liminality in strategic management consultancy'. Human Relations, 59, 929-960.

Engaged? definition and data

I need to know what engagement is, and as Richard Holliman points out in the Engaging Research blog "Public engagement with research and school-university partnership work means different things to different people". But if I'm working on engagement with the JuxtaLearn project and evaluating engagement, then I need to know what it is, what creates it, what its results are, and I need to know what data to collect in order to evaluate engagement. So I have to know what engagement is before I can evaluate it.
The OU 'Public Engagement with Research Catalyst Team defines engaged research thus:

Excellent public engagement with research is reflected in the different ways that researchers meaningfully connect and share research with various stakeholders, user communities and members of the public. Done well, public engagement with research will generate benefits, changes and effects for all participants as they share knowledge, expertise and skills. Excellence will be demonstrated partly through recognition of the contributions that all participants make to the shaping of research agendas, the processes of conducting research, and in the products of that research.[http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/per/?page_id=1621]

I read two actions here, where engagement

1.  is reflected
2. generates

"Excellent public engagement with research is reflected..." suggests that we'll recognise engagement when we see it, in the way that I recognise myself when I see myself in the mirror. But the reflection is not me but an image of me. Magritte painted "the Treachery of Images" as a pipe under which he wrote, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe", French for "This is not a pipe", and indeed the painting is merely an image of a pipe, not a pipe. So we do not in the first sentence of the above definition of engagement have a definition of engagement, merely a statement that it will be (passive voice) reflected. I want to know actions: how to engage, what I have to do to engage, and I need to know beforehand what those actions are so I can plan my engagement and others' engagement, not have to recognise it after the event, when it's too late.
 "Done well, public engagement with research will generate benefits,..” This part of the definition tells me that engagement generates, I understand an action that "generates benefits, changes and effects" is an engaged action. Therefore to engage, I must plan to generate benefits, changes and effects. And from the first part of the definition, I will recognise engagement through the (I assume) consequent reflections that results from the action of generating.
What might an engaged relationship be? It might require commitment. a context with visibility (behaviour is public), volition (with an element of choice) and irrevocability (behaviour cannot be undone) “should generate stronger commitment” (Weick, 1995: p159). Benefits and changes must be the consequent "shared knowledge, expertise and skills". Would such context and behaviour generate benefits, changes and effects?
The given definition provides a means to recognise data to collect, but we must accept the data may be wrong data if the definition is flawed. What we may have however, is an opportunity to identify engagement and create a better definition.