aligning purpose through practice: enhancing engagement...

Aligning purpose through practice

Enhancing engagement among millennial workers by harnessing

social activism as part of the employee value proposition

Presented to

The Graduate School of Business University of Cape Town

In partial fulfilment

of the requirements for the degree

Master of Business Administration specialising in Executive Management

Submitted by:

HAROON ABRAHAMS

ABRHAR001

Supervisors:

Professor Kosheek Sewchurran

Dr Gavin Andersson

December 2017

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UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN

GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

Declaration

1. I know that plagiarism is wrong. Plagiarism is to use another’s work and pretend that it is your

own.

2. I have used the APA convention for citation and referencing. Each significant contribution and

quotation from the works of other people has been attributed, cited and referenced where

appropriate.

3. I certify that this submission is all my own work.

4. I have not allowed and will not allow anyone to copy this assignment with the intention of

passing it off as his or her own work.

5. I have run this document through a plagiarism checking tool.

Signed:

Date: Saturday, 06 January 2018

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A L I G N I N G P U R P O S E T H R O U G H P R A C T I C E Page iii

Abstract

Purpose: Studies have shown that post-millennial employees yearn for meaningful work within

a socially responsible organisation. While many listed organisations espouse and drive these societal

aims in the public arena, they are not always fully appreciated by staff across the organisation, thus

negating the potential to create the desired alignment. At the same time, the retention of young,

talented employees remains a challenge for many companies, including my own. This action research

study aims to explore this scenario within the Branch Network of the Retail and Business Bank of Absa

and answer the following question: Could millennial involvement in a meaningful citizenship strategy

enhance their engagement in the organisation?

Design / methodology / approach: Adopting a pragmatic stance underpinned by Phronetic Social

Science, this paper uses Integrative Thinking as a theoretical framework with which to explore the

problem situation. Data was sourced via: (a) a literature survey to incorporate previous research

related to this situation, and (b) primary data collected ethnographically as field research via two

different experiences. The first was an engagement with a stakeholder trying to implement an

enterprise development program and the next was in collaboration with selected millennial staff

members from within my business, as they embarked on a project to roll out an educational gaming

app into high schools across the province, in a bid to support the business and entrepreneurial skills

development of high school learners on behalf of Absa. All of the insights gained in this study were

then filtered through the lenses of two selected Flexons, coupled with the use of grounded theory

techniques in order to enhance data triangulation and allow for multiple focal perspectives to

contribute toward a richer descriptive theory.

Findings: The data gathered from both sources supports the notion that company sponsored

social activism could enhance employee engagement among millennial staff. This resulted in three

salient themes emerging in support of Social Activism as an engagement practice. These themes point

to an organisational view that moves beyond intrinsic motivational drivers and starts integrating the

values of the individual and the organisation. The descriptive theory developed uncovers the causal

model that would leverage this engagement practice as a support practice within the larger context

of millennial engagement. The theory posits that despite having a very practical impact, Social

Activism can only be driven as a dynamic system if the leadership and team culture is healthy.

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Research limitations / implications: The findings of this paper have clearly demonstrated that

social concerns are not merely an espoused value for millennial staff but that they also have very real

implications on millennial engagement. They also show that when given a choice, millennials would

opt to get involved in social causes from within their organisations. The analysis of the findings also

show how social activism could be used to engage millennial staff members and create a greater

personal alignment between them and the organisation they work for. What it does not do, however

is test the actual improvement in engagement after engaging in a citizenship project, despite early

indicators that engagement has been impacted positively. The theory however, lends itself to future

studies and opens up the path to multiple dimensions that could be explored in this regard

Originality / value: While many studies have been conducted on millennials and how to engage

them and quite a few studies refer to their desire to do good in society, most refer to intrinsic

engagement practices aligned to internal company policies and culture; none that I could find have

made the case for a company-sponsored citizenship program and then tested the impact when staff

did get involved. While this work was conducted over a time-frame too short to test an actual shift in

engagement, there is sufficient evidence to indicate a positive tilt in employee sentiment toward the

organisation and the work done. The research in this dissertation will thus add to the body of

knowledge on the topic.

Total Document Word Count: 26820 Total Number of Pages: 71

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction to the study ................................................................................................................ 10

1.1: Introduction ............................................................................................................................................... 10

1.2: Situation of concern / opportunity ............................................................................................................ 10

1.2.1: Millennials and engagement .......................................................................................................... 11

1.2.2: Why Social Activism? ..................................................................................................................... 11

1.2.3: Shared Growth in Absa (Barclays Africa Group Limited) ................................................................ 12

1.3: Research goals ........................................................................................................................................... 13

1.4: Focusing questions .................................................................................................................................... 14

1.5: Framing the study...................................................................................................................................... 15

1.6: Argument for relevance ............................................................................................................................ 16

1.7: Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................. 17

Chapter 2: Research Methodology ................................................................................................................... 18

2.1: Introduction ............................................................................................................................................... 18

2.2: Research approach: Pragmatism ............................................................................................................... 18

2.3: Research style: Phronetic Social Science ................................................................................................... 19

2.4: Theoretical framework .............................................................................................................................. 22

2.4.1: Integrative Thinking Practice Framework ...................................................................................... 22

2.4.2: Flexons as a tool for the Design of Insight ..................................................................................... 22

2.5: Research method(s): Data gathering and data analysis ............................................................................ 24

2.6: Rigour and ethical considerations ............................................................................................................. 26

2.6.1: Trustworthiness ............................................................................................................................. 26

2.6.2: Ethical considerations .................................................................................................................... 27

2.7: Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................. 28

Chapter 3: Literature Review ............................................................................................................................ 29

3.1: Approach taken and special considerations regarding millennial content ............................................... 29

3.2: The greatest divide – Generation Me or We? ........................................................................................... 29

3.3: Honing in on societal involvement and community orientation ............................................................... 30

3.4: So how does it become Activism… and what makes it special? ................................................................ 32

3.5: Could corporate social responsibility (activism) enhance employee engagement? ................................. 33

3.6: Concluding thoughts and next steps ......................................................................................................... 34

Chapter 4: A few ethnographical perspectives................................................................................................. 36

4.1: Vignette #1 – the enterprise development dilemma ................................................................................ 36

4.2: Vignette #2 – Kreeate, a limited test for staff participation in Shared Growth ........................................ 38

4.3: Summarising narrative .............................................................................................................................. 45

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Chapter 5: Analysis & Findings ......................................................................................................................... 46

5.1: Zooming in on what is salient – the evolutionary flexon .......................................................................... 46

5.2: Appreciating causality through the decision-agent flexon ........................................................................ 48

5.2.1: Vignette # 1 – the enterprise dilemma .......................................................................................... 48

5.2.2: Vignette #2 – Kreeate .................................................................................................................... 50

5.3: Toward a descriptive theory for action ..................................................................................................... 53

5.4: Findings ..................................................................................................................................................... 57

Chapter 6: Reflections and Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 58

6.1: Introduction ............................................................................................................................................... 58

6.2: Research implications and next steps ....................................................................................................... 58

6.2.1: Research goals and commentary ................................................................................................... 58

6.2.2: Implications for further studies...................................................................................................... 59

6.2.3: Relevance of the research .............................................................................................................. 59

6.3: Personal reflections on this study ............................................................................................................. 60

6.4: Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................. 61

References ............................................................................................................................................................ 62

Appendix A. .................................................................................................................................................. A-1

A.1: Shared Growth Article .............................................................................................................................. A-1

A.2: TBWA – The future of social activism (infographic) ................................................................................. A-2

A.3: Kreeate – Prospectus and Links ................................................................................................................ A-5

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List of Figures

Figure 1: Integrated Thinking Process – adapted from source: ........................................................................... 16

Figure 2: My research process as a personalised LUMAS model – adapted from source: ................................... 25

Figure 3: Kreeate / Absa Rollout Flight Plan ......................................................................................................... 40

Figure 4: Staff members' feedback on Kreeate .................................................................................................... 43

Figure 5: Knowledge funnel as a lens to determine salience ............................................................................... 47

Figure 6: Interrelationship diagraph (ID) of core variables ................................................................................... 54

Figure 7: CMO of problem situation ..................................................................................................................... 55

Figure 8: Shared Growth article from in-house magazine .................................................................................. A-1

Figure 9: The future of social activism. Infographic – image 1 of 3. Source: (TBWA, 2012) ............................... A-2

Figure 10: The future of social activism. Infographic – image 2 of 3. Source: (TBWA, 2012) ............................. A-3

Figure 11: The future of social activism. Infographic – image 3 of 3. Source: (TBWA, 2012) ............................. A-4

List of Tables

Table 1: Criteria for trustworthiness .................................................................................................................... 26

Table 2: Summary of Surveys of Millennials – source: ......................................................................................... 31

Table 3: Responses from conversants - Kreeate ................................................................................................... 44

Table 4: Synthesised CATWOE on Vignette #1 ..................................................................................................... 48

Table 5: Synthesised CATWOE on Kreeate ........................................................................................................... 50

Table 6: Affinity diagram showing variables extracted from CATWOEs ............................................................... 52

Table 7: Research evaluation ................................................................................................................................ 58

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List of Abbreviations

Abbreviation Meaning

BBBEE Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment

CEO Chief Executive Officer

CLD Causal Loop Diagram

CMO Context-Mechanism-Output

ED / ESD Enterprise Development / Enterprise Supply-chain Development

EVP Employee value proposition

SSM Soft systems methodology

Glossary of terms

Term Description

Algorithm(ic)

By definition, a specific code or formula used to derive a specific outcome. In our context of

Integrated and Design Thinking, it is extended to refer to a clearly defined environment where

things work as expected.

Baby Boomers The term used to describe the generational cohort born between 1946 and 1964.

CATWOE

An acronym referring to Customer, Actors, Transformation Process, Weltanshauung (or

World-view), Owner/s, and Environmental Constraints. A CATWOE analysis, according to Peter

Checkland who developed the tool, is a simple checklist that can be used to stimulate thinking

about problems and solutions within a human activity framework.

Generation X or

Gen X

The demographic cohort following the baby boomers and preceding the Millennials. The exact

birth dates of Gen-Xers (as they are known) are disputed but range from the early-to-mid

1960s to the early 1980s.

Generation Z or

Gen-Z

Also known as i-Generation, Post-Millennials, or Homeland Generation is the demographic

cohort after Millennials.

Heuristic A rule of thumb or general understanding of how things work.

Mega U Absa’s youth banking account, offered free of charges to clients under the age of 18.

Millennial The demographic cohort that follows the Gen-Xers. Birthdates are also disputed but range

between 1980 and the early 2000s.

Noddy badge

A pop culture term referring to someone getting a prize for doing something below their

potential (or without value). Often refers to getting recognised just for showing up, rather

than achieving anything.

Shared Growth

The Barclays Africa Group’s (locally, Absa) citizenship, or corporate social responsibility

program built on the three pillars of: education and skills; enterprise development; and

financial inclusion.

Social Activism

Incorporates an enhanced understanding of Activism, taking the millennials ways of

interacting with the world into account. It recognises how they actively support causes that

they care about, in new and enhanced ways that extend activism beyond just visible (physical)

mass action and volunteerism, spreading it into the digital world across a multitude of

channels

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Acknowledgements

I wish to express my sincere gratitude to Kosheek and Gavin, for their faith in me and for pushing me

to get to this point. Sometimes a less than gentle nudge is needed to get someone over the line. Both

of your guidance, support and encouragement made me dig a little deeper when things got tough.

To Jenny, for helping me get to grips with my irrational dislike of literature reviews, for knowing when

to reach out and for understanding.

To Sherry, for the support, advice and assistance whenever I called on you. Your warmth and

encouragement certainly made a huge difference.

To Mariska and Riette for always checking in and making sure that I was okay and still on track, despite

the fact that I never was.

To Jonathan, for the “providence” and care and for being one of the most authentic people I know.

And last, but most of all, to my wife, Fahrenaaz, for her forbearance and commitment over an

extremely tumultuous two years. Words cannot express my love and gratitude. I could not have

completed this without your support.

Thank you everyone.

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Chapter 1: Introduction to the study

1.1: Introduction

The world of work is changing at a rapid pace and if we are to build businesses that remain relevant

we also need to create environments that support and foster engagement for the future leaders of

our organisations. Engagement in this sense, refers to the “extent to which people are personally

involved in the success of the business” (Bridger, 2014, p. 7). Typically, if we subscribe to the current

paradigms developed from the theory of generations as first theorised by Karl Mannheim (1952,

republished 1972) then these leaders will be drawn from the socio-cultural generation group that is

now starting to dominate the formal workplace, the Millennials. Using the definition espoused by Joel

Stein (2013), these are individuals born between 1980 and 2000. On the global arena, these are also

the voices that appear to be clamouring for political change.

As a millennial myself (just barely), I have personally been confronted with “messages” that have led

me to the idea that my own purpose may be very closely linked to getting more involved in making a

societal impact and being a better citizen by aligning to a specific cause. A part of this sequence of

personal messages also tends to resonate with the sentiment that the world needs a shift from

“individual-centred” consumerism to “community-focussed” idealism. I have also held conversations

with a number of younger staff members who have professed that they want the company to create

a “community feel” aligned to doing the right things in society. I am interested in corroborating my

perspectives in this regard and testing the extent to which this is indeed true.

1.2: Situation of concern / opportunity

In my professional context, I manage the Retail Branch (Distribution and Customer) network of Absa

Bank in the Western Cape. My role essentially encompasses physical operations, infrastructure

management, channel management and the management of the leadership structures of various sales

and distribution teams. My current headcount stands at 1,328 staff and over the past few years I have

been plagued by a particularly high attrition rate, having appointed in excess of 400 new staff between

January 2016 and May 2017 in order to replace those who had left. There are no unique organisational

reasons in my region that appears to have led to this behaviour, nor could I ascribe the exodus of staff

to acute performance-related issues. We had in fact realised our best performance to scorecard

metrics in 2015.

The popular view within my organisation on the high attrition experienced (nationally) seemed to be

relegating it to a problem with our ability to socialise and retain young, black talent, probably because

we were specifically measuring racial transformation as a performance goal. Upon investigation, I have

determined that there has been no statistically high bias in the racial make-up of staff who have left

my business. What I have found interesting however has been the fact that when I reviewed my staff

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composition, 55% of the population are staff aged 36 and younger. In other words, greater than half

of the staff in my business today are millennials, which mirrors the American workplace statistics

claimed by Valerie Grubb (2017) in her book, Clash of the generations. This discovery has reinforced

my opinion that my retention problem was not specifically related to transformation, but that it was

a general mismatch in current practices to ensure the retention of our millennial staff. This is further

supported by the fact that many of the employees with longer tenure, who are also currently

occupying higher job levels tend to be older, non-millennial staff.

1.2.1: Millennials and engagement

Peering a bit deeper into the issue, I discovered a plethora of research on the engagement of

millennials in the workplace, several of which will be referred to in the pages that follow. These bodies

of work are mostly international publications, however S. Zandile Ndlovu (2015), a UCT alumnus, in

her Masters dissertation conducts a full study on the factors that engage young talent across a broad

spectrum with a slightly more contemporary, locally balanced view on the matter as well. The findings

echo those of the international studies which will be reviewed in greater detail through my literature

review in Chapter 3 of this report. Ndlovu (ibid.) makes a firm case for diversifying engagement

practices to match the needs of millennials. What stood out for me in her work, however was the fact

that even though the engagement themes covered in her interviews with millennial workers and their

employers could be categorised into similar and related themes, a substantial misalignment appeared

to exist between the actual engagement practices that the millennials valued and those that their

organisational leaders assumed were the most important to them (Ndlovu, 2015, pp. 41-42). I was

also drawn to the fact that one of the engagement practices mentioned as being important in her

paper, but not explored in great detail, was around the engagement practices related to social impact

and purposeful work.

Since employee value propositions (EVPs) are ostensibly designed based on what employers believe

(through research or other means) employees want, any misalignment to these expectations could

dampen employee engagement. In fact, our own organisation had just recently concluded a two-year

study facilitated by an external consultancy to unpack our own EVP challenges and the results point

to similar mismatches.

1.2.2: Why Social Activism?

Amherst College, on their website discussing Public Interest careers (Amherst College, n.d.), define

Social Activism as “an intentional action with the goal of bringing about social change”. Brian Martin

(2007, p. 20) goes further to say that “[t]here are many varieties of activism” and that “[a]ctivism is

not well defined, so different people often have somewhat different ideas of what constitutes

activism”. He also purports that true activism to his mind, is action for social cause that happens in

public and goes beyond just the notion of “volunteerism”. I would like to counter that the spirit of

social activism is cultivated not in the sensationalised acts of opposition that make the headline news,

but rather through the cumulative agitation of individuals who rally behind social causes that can

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effect changes that would benefit society at large, beyond their normal individual altruistic pursuits.

There is a popular meme pervading relevant social media platforms these days that states that

“activism is the rent we pay for living on earth.”

With this in mind, one thing that has caught my attention quite early on as I perused the readings on

millennials in the workplace, has been the recurrence of this theme, in the context that I have

explained it above. Valerie Grubb (2017, p. 93) talks about “connecting the company mission to social

goals” and how this has become an important consideration in managing the younger generations of

employees. David Zenoff (2013) states that one of the common traits of organisations with a high

degree of employee engagement is that they align strongly to a social cause. Tania Ellis (2010) refers

to “Generation MeWe” and the birth of a “conscious labourforce” as she explores the issues that have

now become relevant in business. In a report commissioned by the global marketing and public

relations agency, TBWA (2012), the study specifically investigates the future of social activism in the

context of the millennials. What I had not yet found however were case studies testing this hypothesis

and, coupled with my own resonance with the concept in recent times, it has left me highly receptive

to exploring this theory with a practical lens.

1.2.3: Shared Growth in Absa (Barclays Africa Group Limited)

As I considered the application of this study within my own context, I needed to reflect on my own

organisation’s current citizenship strategy, formally introduced to the market as Shared Growth.

Launched at the end of 2015, it is a clearly defined strategy built on the three pillars of: education and

skills; enterprise development; and financial inclusion. The premise of leveraging these three pillars in

particular is to address key societal issues that underpin the economic inequalities that prevail across

Africa. By way of example, if we consider education and skills as just one broad element, we can find

the indicators like access to education, vocationally relevant training opportunities and job-market

readiness driving this pillar. These indicators, as societal constraints also feed into the public rhetoric

that surrounds recent social movements like the Fees must fall drive in South Africa. We can similarly

unpack each of the pillars and tie them back to socio-economic challenges that will require direct

action in order to stimulate sustainable growth. These factors also align quite directly with the results

of the TBWA report (as mentioned above) regarding what the millennials in South Africa feel are

strong social causes to rally behind. The Shared Growth strategy draws its inspiration from Porter and

Kramer’s (2011, p. 4) concept of shared value, which they assert, “involves creating economic value in

a way that also creates value for society by addressing its needs and challenges”. This concept is also

explored by Moneyweb (2016) in response to Barclays Africa’s launch of Shared Growth, where they

purport it is an idea “that makes perfect sense” and one which has “gained credibility with scores of

business leaders, including Discovery’s Adrian Gore”. I have included a more detailed discussion on

this strategy in an excerpt taken from our internal staff magazine in Appendix A.1: Shared Growth

Article (on page A-1), in the event that the reader would like to understand the organisation’s journey

from corporate responsibility to Shared Growth.

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I am an ardent supporter of this strategy and I wish to declare this bias upfront. What I have noted

however, is that most of the successes we have realised through the Shared Growth agenda were

either executed by staff members working directly within the company’s citizenship portfolio, or

facilitated in conjunction with external parties in key communities. Internally, while the strategy was

launched and communicated to staff, across the organisation, there is no clear articulation of a call to

action that would enable people to get involved practically on a local level. This then also makes it

hard to determine whether the lack of involvement by all staff, but especially millennials who as

previously mentioned have a desire to make a difference in society, is as a result of a lack of clarity

and line of sight to the strategy, or because the espoused ideals of millennials as researched in

previous studies do not match the reality of the choices that they actually make, thus impacting on

their engagement to and with the organisation.

These factors thus bring me to my research question in the midst of my problem situation:

Could millennial involvement in a meaningful citizenship strategy enhance their engagement in the

organisation?

1.3: Research goals

The aim of this paper is to qualitatively assess and intervene upon the problem situation that I have

defined above after building on my own knowledge of the three dimensions highlighted in the

previous section. It is also meant to provide me with insight into decisions made to get personally

involved in social causes defined by organisations and determine how closely this aligns to the global

research indicating that it is an ideal for millennial staff. These aims are underpinned by the goals that

I have determined as derived from the work done on designing a qualitative study (Maxwell, 2009)

and expressed in relation to my own situation as described above.

On a practical level, I would like to:

• Determine if there is clarity among the millennials around the Shared Growth strategy and what

it means to them practically; would they get involved?

• Test the extent to which company-sponsored social activism actually creates greater alignment

to, and engagement within my organisation.

• Benchmark key practices for incorporation into the company’s employee value proposition (and

transferability to other situations) if praxis and engagement shifts successfully.

Intellectually, I believe that this study could:

• Confirm whether the espoused societal values of millennial staff (as per the literature) match the

reality of choices actually made.

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• Provide insights around the extent to which social activism could actually enhance employee

engagement, and how it could be incorporated into a more cohesive employee value proposition

that addresses the needs of a millennial worker.

Personally, I would like to determine whether getting people involved in championing social change

in the communities that we serve, in the context of my organisation, would enable me to:

• Gain a better understanding on how to motivate the millennial workforce and thereby improve

loyalty, retention and alignment to the company, thus reducing the impact of employee attrition

on my business.

• Gain more insight into the phronetic choices that people make when confronted with doing “the

right thing” in a societal context as part of their jobs, versus merely fulfilling the roles that they

are contracted to do for a salary.

1.4: Focusing questions

In order to focus my research in a manner that would be meaningful both to this study as a research

assignment, as well as my own personal and practical goals as stated above, I have developed the

following focussing questions in order to extract the most relevant insights as I explore the world of

millennial employee engagement, company-sponsored social activism and the impact of phronetic

decision-making in creating greater alignment in this sphere:

1. Why, when we have a Shared Growth (citizenship) strategy that is aligned to the challenges in our

society, have more millennial employees not gotten directly involved?

2. How can we practically align our Shared Growth strategy to the employee value proposition in a

way that would be meaningful to millennial staff?

These questions also serve to answer the four important questions within a phronetic social science

study, customised to speak more specifically to this situation:

• Does the organisation’s Shared Growth agenda align to the values of the millennial worker who

now represents the majority of the workforce? (Where are we going?)

• Is this agenda compelling and clear enough to allow millennial employees to choose to get

involved on behalf of the organisation, without being instructed to do so? (Decision trade-offs)?

• Would millennial involvement in Shared Growth be beneficial to both the staff member and the

organisation? (Is it desirable?)

• How do we ensure that involvement in Shared Growth becomes a sustainable choice for millennial

workers in the organisation? (What should be done?)

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1.5: Framing the study

Roger Martin and Hilary Austen’s (1999) paper on the topic, Integrative Thinking refers to the ability

of leaders to make choices and reach decisions in the midst of “ambiguity, uncertainty, complexity,

instability, uniqueness, and risk” (ibid. p.4). My study deals with an ambiguous current state (high

attrition and perceived low engagement levels among millennial staff, with little to no involvement in

a citizenship strategy that the literature indicates should engender more engagement). While I

entered the fray having adopted a specific stance, I had to remain conscious that my actual

engagement with the topic needed to be guided by the heuristic themes that emerged through the

research process and that it was not unduly influenced by any preconceived notions of what the

outcomes should have been. To this end I needed to remain receptive to adapting my own knowledge

system and using it to guide the decisions that I needed to take as I conducted this study both as a

result of the literature review and in collaboration with the participants I engaged. In addition to

detailing the perspectives gained from these stakeholders, I have kept my own reflections and

learnings as part of this journey in order to validate and incorporate these into my work. This heuristic

process served as the integrative thinking framework that enabled me, having adopted an integrated

thinking stance to cycle through four interrelated steps that represent a series of iterative choices

made and revisited until “integrative integrity” (Martin & Austen, 1999, pp. 4-5) was achieved.

As defined in my previous (unpublished) position paper (Abrahams, 2017), Figure 1 below “has been

collated by integrating diagrams and summarising more detailed descriptions extracted from the work

published by Leavy (2011), Martin (2007), Martin and Austen (1999), Moldoveanu and Martin (2008)

and Sewchurran (2017). It surfaces the pragmatic and hermeneutical nature of the integrative thinking

process. This illustration also surfaces the integrative thinking framework’s alignment with the

phronetic, pragmatic approach in that it opposes the use of epistemic, or universal rules in attempting

to make the necessary choices, but instead relies on an evaluation of the practical, holistic and

strategic “fit” of decisions, as determined by a user consciously engaged in praxis”.

As a model, it helped guide my thinking and decision-making throughout the research process while

maintaining the balance between my ability to hold my stance, and yet embrace any knowledge

gained through my engagement with my topic and my immersion in the action research process. The

framework will help provide the reader with clarity regarding my own paradigms, and those that

emerged as I conducted the study, and that brought rigour to the research choices I made as I

proceeded.

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Figure 1: Integrated Thinking Process – adapted from source:

Martin, R. L. (2007). The opposable mind: how successful leaders win through integrative thinking (Digital ed.). pp. 29 & 81.

Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press.

1.6: Argument for relevance

In a world where the millennial worker is now starting to comprise the majority of the workforce,

gaining clarity on how to attain maximum engagement of this employee base becomes an economic

imperative. Many studies have already been concluded in an effort to provide solutions to this

dilemma and, while they do point to practices that are useful, the majority of them place an emphasis

on building a conducive internal culture (Blattner & Walter, 2015; Espinoza & Ukleja, 2016; Grubb,

2017; Ndlovu, 2015). There is very little said however, about the extent to which the internal culture

is shaped by the organization’s social responsibility initiatives. Some studies moreover suggest that

“the millennials’ results show no relationship between organizational commitment and workplace

culture” and that “the millennial workers would not be any more committed than if it were a lousy

place to work” (Stewart, Oliver, Cravens, & Oishi, 2017, p. 48). We then certainly need to consider a

more integrated approach, aligned to the external interests of the millennial employee as well. Most

of these studies highlight the millennials’ concern for social and environmental issues, and their

concomitant desire that organisational values start aligning with their own (ibid.). If there is even a

possibility that an integrated stance towards social responsibility could lead to enhanced millennial

engagement, then surely this would be worth deeper investigation into how it could work in practice.

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1.7: Conclusion

This chapter has provided the background and rationale to my study, introducing the reader to the

struggle that exists in retaining millennial employees, some context on the unexplored territory of

social activism as a new facet of social responsibility that could speak to a different engagement

approach, and then closer to home, the opportunity that exists within my own environment to explore

this concept against the backdrop of my organisation’s citizenship strategy. It also explores my

research aims against my research question before defining the conceptual framework of Integrative

Thinking, against which I have evaluated the progress and outcomes of this study. It concludes with

an argument for the relevance of this study by drawing on some of preliminary research that I have

used to inform my stance. In the next chapter, I will provide a full account of my research approach

and methodology, with a detailed rationale as to my selection.

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Chapter 2: Research Methodology

2.1: Introduction

This chapter contains a detailed description of my research design and methodology. As a novice, I

have done a fairly extensive job fully explaining all of the theory underpinning the various concepts

and my rationale in making certain choices in terms of my research. Peter Checkland (2000, pp. S36 -

S37) defines methodology as the framework that houses the methods eventually employed. The

methodology thus contains the logic of why certain methods could be applied to a particular problem

situation and provides overarching context to the methods employed. Checkland (2000, p. S36) also

posits that the “user; methodology as words on paper, and (the) situation as perceived by the user”

“are intimately linked” because the user would develop a specific way of thinking about their problem

situation that would lead them to select particular methods to analyse and alter the situation.

As this paper is essentially an action research paper directed at a socially constructed situational

concern that I intended to learn from and act upon both as a researcher and participant, whereby my

research process was as much a part of the transformation process of my situation as a guideline to

its exposition, the most appropriate thinking framework to employ was that of the “internalised SSM”

or soft systems methodology as defined by Checkland (2000, pp. S38 - S42). This chapter will describe

my specific application of this methodology as it relates to my situation.

2.2: Research approach: Pragmatism

Maturana spoke of reality as “an explanatory proposition” whereby “we are involved in a continuous

process of self-production” (Origin Symposium III - How it all begins, 2011). What this means is that

we construct the rationale for the worlds we live in through our lived experiences, which in turn

impacts on the next experience we engage in. It is the construction of this rationale that is the hallmark

of abductive reasoning which Hansen (2008, p. 455) says, “entails a logic of discovery” “where we

attend to and order experience”. Abduction is therefore a sense-making process whereby we develop

theories to help us explain new experiences. These theories rely on our ability to assign meaningful

relationships to dissimilar things (Hansen, 2008, p. 457) which then allows us to create new

knowledge. Abduction is linked to Charles Saunders Pierce, a pragmatist who is cited as having

“considered abduction ‘to be the essence of his pragmatism’” (Hansen, 2008, p. 455). In this definition

of pragmatism, it is seen as both the precursor to, and a consequence of abduction. To explain:

abductive reasoning follows a pragmatic event (or lived experience) that is new to the participant and

thus requires an explanation. However, since a pragmatist is inclined toward active experimentation,

they would also be testing this new theory by “acting upon” what they now know (Hansen, 2008, p.

455).

Drawing on this definition of pragmatism, the approach of this research assignment was to derive an

explanatory theory of what could be true about millennial employees and their desire to be engaged

in social activism through their firms, based on experiential knowledge within my situational context,

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which could be tested through active experimentation to determine its viability. Since my research

environment is an inherently social one, the strength of adopting a pragmatic approach resonates

with Maturana’s teachings, in that the understanding we would gain from this process would be

extremely relevant to me, as a key observer within the context that I was exploring as I engaged the

realities of what I was learning on a practical level. The challenge with abductive reasoning however

is that “while our stocks of knowledge help us assimilate as we apprehend, they also coerce us, forcing

us to make sense of experience in ways we are already familiar with” (Hansen, 2008, p. 458). This

could potentially threaten the viability of my research and have me (it) fall prey to the cognitive bias

that Maturana (2011) warns against when he says that “we are always in danger of thinking that we

hold the truth. Certainty does not exist. I can only be certain that I do not know.” Abductive reasoning

is, by its pragmatic nature tied to the observer and hence is only as valid as the perspectives that have

been incorporated in its execution. This also correlates very closely with Johan Strümpfer’s (2016)

assertion that every view is a “partial representation of reality”. As such, a large portion of both the

sense-making and experimentation (as will be explored in the methods below) relied on the

triangulation of multiple perspectives in order to create an emergence of pragmatic truth(s), which

Baker and Schaltegger (2015, p. 265) have declared is a “liberating, view of truth, wherein the ‘truth’

value of a statement resides not in how accurately it represents the external world but rather in how

useful it is for enacting change”.

For me, the value of adopting a pragmatic approach to this research assignment resonates with Baker

and Schaltegger’s (2015, p. 266) claim that “it is the application of ideas to these changing

circumstances through experimentation, with a view to develop a better world, which gives

pragmatism an ameliorating quality”.

2.3: Research style: Phronetic Social Science

Since the approach that I took with this research is a pragmatic and abductive approach, it is only

fitting that the style with which this approach is tempered would be complementary and align as

closely to a soft-systems, social study as possible. To this end, I employed phronetic social science as

the research template through which to make sense of my problem situation and the ensuing results.

Phronetic social science derives from Aristotle’s three virtues as defined in his treatise on ethics

named Nicomachean Ethics as cited in Dottori (2009), Flyvbjerg (2006), Stefanazzi (n.d.) and Nonaka,

Chia and Peltokorpi (2014). According to these sources, Aristotle highlighted three distinct ethical

virtues: episteme, techne and phronesis. Where episteme deals with knowledge and conduct based on

universal rules that are constant, or a body of generic, immutable knowledge that provide a rationale

for natural occurences; and techne refers to knowledge applied to the production of an artefact, which

could either be made, improved upon or not made at all; phronesis refers to the ethical consideration

that the individual applies to his lived experience in order guide his future actions toward a better

practice in specific circumstances (Flyvbjerg, 2006, pp. 370-372). Flyvbjerg (2006, p. 371) also notes

that, “whereas episteme concerns theoretical know why and techne denotes technical know how,

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phronesis emphasizes practical knowledge and practical ethics. Phronesis is often translated as

‘prudence’ or ‘practical common sense’”. Dottori (2009, p. 306) makes the distinction between techne

and phronesis even clearer where he explains that “art, that means techne, is on its peak when it

doesn’t do anything of what phronesis does. Through learning, art tries to find ways to improve its

own producing and that’s why it can be learnt: but it’s not possible to learn how to exist. Phronesis is

therefore everybody’s rational reflection on what is useful for himself, what serves for his life, the eu

zen. That’s why phronesis is the knowledge for itself what is good and its practice, the exis praktike,

that is the continuous practice of the practical knowledge, while techniqu is the exis poietike, the

experience acquired while producing. Gadamer arrives to the point of even defining phronesis as die

Wachsamkeit der Sorge um sich selbst, the watchfulness care for oneself”.

On an individual level, phronesis is thus a practice of pragmatically (and consciously) applying self-

acquired wisdom through personal reflection and sense-making grounded in past experiences and

knowledge. Extending this Aristotelian virtue beyond the individual into a group or social setting is

thus the basis of phronetic social science. Where the individual is concerned with his or her own

wisdom as it applies to his or her own situation, the phronetic social scientist aggregates such research

and its associated wisdom toward a socially constructed reality, with the aim of achieving a research

paradigm that is aligned to the changeability and subjective nature of human systems.

The greatest advantage in having adopted phronetic social science as a style lies in its ability to

overcome the failing of traditional scientific research styles that treat all similar situations as common

and eliminate all outliers with the blanket disclaimer of ceteris parabus. In human systems, this

assumption can be misleading to the researcher and could result in relatively weak behavioural

theories and solutions that do not address the specific situation well enough to realise a change. By

contrast, phronetic social scientists “take their point of departure in their attitude to the situation in

the organization and society being studied. They seek to ensure that such an attitude is not based on

idiosyncratic morality or personal preferences, but on a common view among a specific reference

group to which the organization researchers refer” (Flyvbjerg, Making organization research matter:

Power, values and phronesis, 2006, p. 375). This implies a much deeper appreciation of the context

being studied with less components of the problem situation being relegated or reduced to epistemic

generalities or norms. Within this context, another inherent strength of phronetic social science lies

in its stance that clear consideration must be given to the power dynamics prevalent in a given system.

Understanding the power dynamics within a specific context guides the phronetic organisation

researcher away from the indiscriminate assumption that people will act according to their own will(s)

and value judgements; what Flyvbjerg (2006, p. 376) refers to as “the voluntarism and idealism typical

of so much ethical thinking”. Knowing that this deep understanding of the social dynamics is a research

imperative then also draws the researcher closer to the context and underpins another strength of

phronetic social science, which abhors generalisation and assumptions inferred from a broad

perspective. Instead, it complies with the idea that a social system is better understood when the

details of interactions within that system is understood, “taking its point of departure in organizational

micro-practices, searching for the Great within the Small and vice versa” (Flyvbjerg, Making

organization research matter: Power, values and phronesis, 2006, p. 377). All of these traits are also

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complimentary to abductive reasoning which is dependent on praxis for its theory generation and

development.

This deep engagement with the context however can create problems for a phronetic social scientist

where the lines between observer and participant within the social system being studied can become

blurred. This is where researcher bias becomes a potential weakness to the phronetic social scientist,

critically affecting the validity of the work being done; unless he or she is able to consciously guard

against this. Flyvbjerg (2006, p. 377) warns against this when he says that “action researchers and

anthropologists who have gone native typically identify with the people they are studying; they adopt

the perspective and goals of those studied and use research results in an effort to achieve these goals”;

but he maintains that a “phronetic organisation researcher … in the service of truth, (will) retain the

classic academic freedom to problematize and be critical of what they see” (ibid.). While phronetic

organisational researchers need to immerse themselves within the context they are studying, they

also need to note and reflect on their findings objectively in order to avoid manipulating their results.

The best way to aide this process is through engagement and dialogue with the users of their context.

“‘Dialogue’ comes from the Greek dialogos, where dia means ‘between’ and logos means ‘reason’. In

contrast to the analytical and instrumental rationality, which lie at the cores of both episteme and

techne, the practical rationality of phronesis is based on a socially conditioned, intersubjective

‘between-reason’” (Flyvbjerg, Making organization research matter: Power, values and phronesis,

2006, p. 382). Phronetic research thus requires the solicitation of multiple perspectives on the same

situation in order to enhance the degree of validity and ensure that any potential research bias is

minimised.

This then leaves us to explore one last facet of phronetic social science that could be either a strength

or a potential pitfall to the researcher if the approach is not well thought-through. Phronetic research

lends itself to the exploration of potentially conflicting paradigms and ambiguous realities that often

present in social contexts. We refer to these states as tension points which Flyvbjerg, Landman and

Schram (2016, p. 3) define as “'power relations that are particularly susceptible to problematization

and thus change, because they are fraught with dubious practices, contestable knowledge and

potential conflict' (citing themselves). They also assert that “[t]ension points are 'the fault lines

phronetic researchers seek out'” (ibid.). Working through tension points has the potential to provide

a contextual understanding of behaviours at play and also to shape future practice. Accordingly, this

is well suited to phronetic research, which does not deal in the universal truths of episteme or the

output-dependent techne. The caveat here is that the researcher has to ensure adequate triangulation

of the data being considered. In order to maximise effectiveness, not only must the researcher

consider the perspectives of the users within the context (individually and as a cohesive group), he or

she must also ensure that the structures surrounding the actors are evaluated. Flyvbjerg (2006, p. 380)

says that: “Understanding from ‘within’ the organization and from ‘without’ are both accorded

emphasis, which is what Bourdieu … calls ‘the internalization of externality and the externalization of

internality’ (Bourdieu 1977: 72)”. Good phronetic research takes cognisance of the fact that actors act

within the margins of a structural context that tempers the actions taken in order to conform to the

ideals of the structure. In laymen’s terms, whether we are acting inside of the box, or outside of the

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box, that action is still influenced by the box; so, it cannot be ignored as an external factor. It is often

the interplay between the actors and these structures that create the tension points that phronetic

research allows us to explore.

Phronetic social science as it draws upon the Aristotelian virtue of phronesis or prudence, thus

provides us with a valid style of approaching contextual, social engagement and reflection in order to

generate more useful, and practically ethical theories around a specific management problem which

can then be tested pragmatically in order to determine their usefulness. The hallmark of this science

is that it embraces the marriage of experiential knowledge and adaptive practice as being core to its

premise. “Good deliberation that is not followed by the appropriate action does not count as

phronesis. While practical wisdom includes knowledge, it is more than knowledge. Knowledge and

skills can be misused to produce poor, and morally unsatisfactory results, phronesis cannot. Practical

wisdom is an on-going process of personal development, integrated into the psyche by the process of

inquiry, deliberation, and right actions in the everyday lived experience” (Stefanazzi, n.d., p. 2).

Phronetic social science is the aggregation of this statement.

2.4: Theoretical framework

2.4.1: Integrative Thinking Practice Framework

Using Integrative Thinking (Martin R. L., 2007) as the theoretical framework within which I considered

the problem situation against the emergent themes and relevant knowledge that I assimilated, the

inductive component of this paper is dealt with by means of a literature review, which provided me

with an established theory of the subject matter I was working with, against which I could test my own

experiential observations and also to provide me with a solid base of prior knowledge upon which to

build and explore my designed outcomes as a theory. This allowed me to ensure that I considered the

most relevant factors (salience and causality) when analysing my data within the framework

employed. The sequencing and resolution phases of my approach then allowed for greater abduction

as I worked toward building new insights or theories through practical application. I enhanced this

phase by drawing on flexons as lenses through which to filter those perspectives.

2.4.2: Flexons as a tool for the Design of Insight

In their book, The Design of Insight, Moldoveanu and Leclerc (2015, p. 4) purport that in business

“[t]he work we do creates most of its value through defining problems: turning predicaments into

precisely articulated problems we can solve”. In the language of integrative thinking as described

above, what this means is that we need to ensure that the most salient factors currently causing our

concerns are brought into sharp focus in order to get us from “where we are to where we want to be”

(ibid. p. 4). They go on to say that the best way to articulate our problems in a meaningful way is

through the use of a “problem-solving language” and that “depending on which language [we] use”

we could potentially evaluate the problem landscape from a variety of perspectives due to the “lensing

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feature[s]” inherent in these languages (ibid. p. 7). This then also provides us with the variety and

diversity required to appreciate these perspectives within their context.

This brings us to the employment of flexons as a cascade of diverse lenses (multiple perspectives on

multiple perspectives, if you prefer) that were used in this paper in order to gain a broader perspective

on the problem situation that I have researched. Moldoveanu and Leclerc (2015, p. 25) define flexons

as “flexible objects for generating novel solutions” due to their versatility as problem-solving

languages. They have five types of Flexons which could broadly be defined as follows:

• Network Flexons show various nodes/entities and their connections through interaction, flow of

information, control, services, payment, etc.

• Evolutionary Flexons look at the “variation-selection-retention” cycle of elements within an

environment that allow it to evolve from one state to another (more useful) one.

• Decision Agent Flexons, which describe situations in terms of beliefs, utilities, strategies and

equilibria at multiple levels – and also highlight influence and power dynamics within

relationships.

• System Dynamics Flexons can show the relationships between cause and effect, and how various

outputs are dependent on specific contexts within a system.

• Information Processing Flexons could articulate what information is used, how it is derived and

what the value proposition of the information is.

For the purpose of this paper I have used the following two flexons as lenses to assist me with problem

articulation and ultimately to guide my design thinking process:

(a) The Evolutionary Flexon, in the form of a Knowledge Funnel, due to its ability to show the

insights that I have gathered throughout the research process on millennials, engagement and

social activism as a realm of variety (or mysteries) that we could filter with the use of key

heuristics to guide us to the most useful variables (selection) for evaluation and incorporation

into our design proposition.

(b) The Decision Agent Flexon that was able to use the insights gleaned to identify the various

stakeholders at play in the corporate system and how their beliefs and strategies were

impacting on the engagement of millennials and the embedment of meaningful social

responsibility programs holistically.

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2.5: Research method(s): Data gathering and data analysis

In keeping with the phronetic, abductive approach espoused as methodology, this is essentially an

action research paper with me fulfilling a role as both researcher and participant within my own

organisational context. The methods employed will relied on a combination of the following:

• A literature review to guide and focus my understanding of the subject matter as it pertains to

millennials, social activism and engagement as I have defined it. The idea around this literature

review was to surface the most salient features to consider in my decision-making process as per

the theoretical framework defined above. The literature review may also have surfaced additional

tensions if the generic definitions conflicted with the experiential realities in my space.

• Primary data was collected using an ethnographic approach: through observation, dialogue and

experimentation in collaboration with selected staff members from within my business and other

stakeholders, in order to solicit multiple perspectives which, coupled with the literature review

and my own historical and existing observations into the above exercise, provided sufficient

triangulation to ensure greater research validity.

• I then explored the detail gleaned through the literature review and my primary data via the use

of the 2 flexons (as discussed above) in order to determine the salience and causality in the context

of my framework. This process also allowed for the emergence of clear perspectives as derived

from the lenses applied, which amplified the quest for validity through a data triangulation

process.

• Using grounded theory techniques, I then assimilated the perspectives collected through the use

of the flexons and categorised them via an Affinity Diagram (AD) in order code them into variables.

I tested the relationships between these variables via an Interrelationship diagraph (ID) which

then then allowed me to generate a descriptive theory specific to my problem situation and

research question, upon which to act and reflect.

The action research approach employed through the use of the methods above, despite its subjective

nature, with its inherent potential for researcher bias and the associated danger of me, as researcher

going “native” (Flyvbjerg, 2006, p. 377) and influencing the outcomes, was designed to ensure that

there was enough variety in the sources of data to provide the triangulation required to enhance the

trustworthiness of my qualitative study (Shenton, 2004) and adequately provide opposition to any

overt bias while still enabling my own experience (and that of my team) to shape the outcomes as it

inevitably did. Keeping my data collection process simple, I was careful to ensure sufficient credibility

in terms grounding my research in the reality of my team and business. My sources are all listed,

referenced and some of them are included in the appendices to this report to ensure that

confirmability was established and this same process of rigorously explaining how my data was

gathered, sorted and annotated will allow the reader to access any information that requires

verification or to test the dependability of the theories derived. Transferability in social studies are

always highly dependent on the context of the user, and since this is an action research paper vested

in Phronetic Social Science and tightly linked to the integrative thinking approach being used; the

reader will have to take cognisance of my situational context and the specific mysteries and heuristics

deemed relevant and salient to the desired model to determine whether they are able to transfer any

of my findings to another situation of their choice. So, unless my own bias (and that of the

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stakeholders I have engaged with) is deemed to have unduly influenced this work; or my individual

context uniquely relegates my findings only to my own situation, my report should have been

researched and presented with sufficient rigour to be deemed valid for all situational contexts similar

to my own.

This study also complies with the UCT Graduate School of Business Ethics in Research policy, which

makes provision for the anonymity and voluntary inclusion of all research participants, governed by

informed and confirmed consent. Participants were allowed to opt into (and out of) the research study

and where necessary, were provided with consent forms outlining their rights and privileges as per

the two key points above. I also ensured that the study did not result in the participants being harmed

or compromised in any way.

As an action research paper, my study conforms to the LUMAS model as defined by Checkland (2000,

pp. S36-S37) and can be visualised specifically as per the illustation below.

Figure 2: My research process as a personalised LUMAS model – adapted from source:

(Checkland, Soft systems methodology: A thirty year retrospective, 2000, p. S37).

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2.6: Rigour and ethical considerations

2.6.1: Trustworthiness

I ensured rigour within my study by addressing key issues of trustworthiness and validity. Using Lincoln

and Guba’s (Cohen & Crabtree, 2006) criteria for validity, this was established as follows:

Table 1: Criteria for trustworthiness

Credibility 1. I sourced data through:

• field work and engagement with multiple stakeholders,

• using multiple methods,

• applying multiple lenses,

• my own reflective notes and

• sourcing a combination of theoretical (previous research) and primary data

with which to work.

This ensured the maximum triangulation of data within my study.

Dependability 1. My research design is clearly signposted and my methodology clearly

explained.

2. All primary data collected has been retained in order to provide a clear line of

sight back to the original comments of the participants within the study.

3. My own reflective notes have provided commentary on the effectiveness of my

research process and are included in the narrative of the study.

Confirmability 1. My own assumptions are clearly stated and signposted throughout the report

and are clarified at key junctures to ensure that my own biases are accounted

for.

2. The rationale for decisions taken are also provided in order to track the

transformation of ideas into action / theories.

3. Both the data analysis (via grounded theory principles) and the evolution of the

theory are tracked and form a clear trail for the reader to follow. This is

supported with diagrammatic representations to assist in mapping the

processes.

Transferability My study provides a thick description of the contextual environment, as well as the

research environment and associated parameters. Clear detail is provided on my

organisation, the demographic make-up and selection of my informants, my own

background and underlying assumptions, the data collection process and the

research milestones.

This should enable any reader to make comparisons to their own context and draw

inferences regarding the transferability of the relevant data to their own situations.

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2.6.2: Ethical considerations

The ethics of my research are underpinned by three main considerations:

Participant Ethics

As detailed in the conversation on data collection, participant ethics are a key consideration of this

study. Despite the fact that I have adopted an auto-ethnographic approach to data collection, I have

still ensured proper onboarding of the research participants and ensured their anonymity and safety

throughout the research process. The actual engagement process involves key ethical considerations

as well. Throughout the study, participants were informed of my position and intent and not only

required to provide their initial perspectives but, when it came to my own team, were also required

to provide input into the design of activities (where relevant) and then fulfil some of the interventions

themselves. This implies that they were faced with choices regarding various costs and benefits to

themselves and others. They also needed to consider their involvement in social activities and weigh

their value judgements against any other considerations that they may have had. As both a researcher

and participant, I needed to place equal value on the consideration of my own values, needs, research

requirements and practical choices, as well as those of all of the other participants as they emerged

and then make decisions that were fair and just in this context.

Social Justice and Utilitarianism

The criteria for ethical decision making in qualitative research was assessed using tests which are

predominantly based on Velasquez’s Ethical Framework (Various, 2016) as they apply to social justice

and utility. This allowed me to calculate the costs, benefits and fairness of all elements of the research

and its associated implemented actions across all stakeholder groupings in order to evaluate the most

ethical course of action and also to discard those elements deemed to be the least ethical in this

regard.

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Phronetic Social Science as an ethical construction

The use of Phronetic Social Science as a research style also lends itself toward a practice of ethical

reflection and experimentation due to its grounding in phronesis, which is one of the three Aristotelian

virtues discussed in his paper on ethics entitled the Nicomachean Ethics (Flyvbjerg, 2006). This study

in particular could thus be seen as an experimentation in group ethical practice, albeit one of practical

ethics and not spiritual or dogmatic morality, which ultimately enhances the overall consideration

given to the traditional view on ethics and enabled me (in collaboration with my participants) to

implement the “right” practices while immersed in the field research. Being an action research study,

I also needed to act ethically in the context of the discussions held with the selected participants,

where I opted to use the Nancy Kline, Thinking Environment methods to ensure that individual input

was not conceded through its adoption (Kline, Time to think: Listening to ignite the human mind,

1999); thereby reducing the impact of power dynamics within the group as they searched for the right

things to practically implement.

2.7: Conclusion

In this chapter I have clearly articulated the research methodology of this action research paper as

one with a pragmatic approach centred in Phronetic Social science and its associated use in abductive

and ethical praxis. I have defined the conceptual framework that I worked with as well as the

perceptual lenses that were employed to integrate and evaluate the data extracted from my literature

review. I have also detailed the primary data sources and explained how I have solicited multiple

perspectives through active experimentation and sense-making in the process of integrative thinking

in order to realise a new descriptive theory as the proposed solution to my problem situation. This

theory could then be applied back into the integrative thinking framework for consideration and

resolution. I concluded with an argument on the validity of my approach as it pertains to a qualitative

research study and considered the ethical implications of the research assignment. In the next chapter

I develop a theoretical framework by conducting a literature review that was used to guide and focus

my understanding of the problem area as it pertains to my selected focus areas.

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Chapter 3: Literature Review

As I have defined in the research design and methodology, I wished to study the millennial situation

through a very specific lens. In order to deepen my understanding of the problem situation within

those parameters, this literature review represents a very specific slice into quite a large repository of

information with the aim of clarifying the existing theories and gaining insight into perspectives that

could enhance my own emerging theory regarding social activism as a millennial engagement practice.

3.1: Approach taken and special considerations regarding millennial content

I approached this literature review by narrowing my search to published articles, reports and

documents that could provide me with insight into millennial-specific content, focussing on matters

relating to their traits, career-centred behaviour, mindset, community orientation and social

involvement. The Internet, including the academically accepted research search engines, are awash

with information on millennials and I tried as far as possible to distinguish between popular,

sensationalised content and sources that had a sounder academic or empirical backing. This statement

is important for the reader to note and to place into context just how much public content there is

that uses popular rhetoric as a data source. Even the sources that have adopted a more rigorous

approach, with empirical data in support of their conclusions, appear to have been influenced by this

rhetoric in some way. As such, there is a popular bias that predominates anything that poses as

knowledge on the millennials as a generation. Most of the theories around this cohort have thus been

borne of an idealistic stance (Carlile & Christensen, 2004) and subsequent literature has attempted to

either fortify or disclaim these theories.

3.2: The greatest divide – Generation Me or We?

Taken as a collective, there are two camps when it comes to an overall definition of who the

millennials are as a generational cohort. The first group of authors have consigned them (us) to a

generation of narcissists known as Generation Me, which was mostly spurred on by psychologist Jean

Twenge’s research and her subsequent (2006) book “Generation Me: why today’s young Americans

are more confident, assertive, entitled—and more miserable than ever before” (Lemmel-Hay, 2017).

Many publications picked up on this work and, while some admittedly tried to provide a balanced view

(Bannon, Ford, & Meltzer, 2011; Espinoza & Ukleja, 2016; Jerome, Scales, Whithem, & Quain, 2014;

Myers & Sadaghiana, 2010), the name stuck along with Twenge’s paradigm on who the millennials

are. Under this banner the “popular perception is that Millennials are impatient, self-important, and

disloyal” (Myers & Sadaghiana, 2010, p. 226) and “that coddled upbringings made millennials selfish,

narcissistic, and excessively dependent on their parents” (Lemmel-Hay, 2017). There are also repeated

mentions of a generation of “trophy” kids (Ellis, 2010; Espinoza & Ukleja, 2016; Jerome, Scales,

Whithem, & Quain, 2014; Martin C. A., 2005) who have become accustomed to receiving Noddy

badges or awards for participation, rather than exceptional achievement. From an organizational

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perspective, this translates broadly into a view on millennials as group of individuals with a high need

for instant gratification, feedback and an inflated self-perception of achievement that does not

necessarily match the organizational view on their performance (Bannon, Ford, & Meltzer, 2011;

Cennamo & Gardner, 2008; Grubb, 2017; Martin C. A., 2005); with a limited inclination to apply

discretionary effort at work (Stewart, Oliver, Cravens, & Oishi, 2017).

On the other side of the fence are the proponents of the Generation We theory. These are the

theorists who put stock on the millennials being tech-savvy, connected, highly collaborative, novel-

thinking, concerned with environmental and social ethics, and the generation that is at once the most

diverse and also the most accepting of diversity in history (Myers & Sadaghiana, 2010; Grubb, 2017;

Espinoza & Ukleja, 2016; Ellis, 2010; Holt, Marques, & Way, 2012). These traits lend themselves to a

paradigm that paints the millennials in a more favourable light, showcasing them as people who care

deeply about why we do things and how we do them together.

The challenge with aligning strongly to either one of the factions is that it each paradigm provides a

fairly one-dimensional lens through which to evaluate a rather large contingent of the earth’s

population, albeit that most of the published sources are skewed to a Western philosophy and

dataset. By extrapolation, these partisan narratives challenge the concept of what it means to be

human and as Margaret Archer (2000, p. 2) laments, these “strident voices would dissolve the human

being into discursive structures and humankind into a disembodied textualism.” Her key points are

that it is our lived experiences as we interact with the world that ultimately determines who we are

and who we become, resonating with Maturana’s (2011) view that “we are involved in a continuous

process of self-production” and as such cannot be boxed. It is thus far more useful in our current

discourse to consider the millennials as a blend of both, possibly interacting along a spectrum of

behaviours embodying some common traits that possibly blend their (our) ardent individualism with

a concern for and a desire to create with others (Ellis, 2010; Grubb, 2017).

3.3: Honing in on societal involvement and community orientation

A corollary to the ‘Generation Me’ perspective is a notion that millennials cannot be other than

individualistic. This view does not support the idea that millennials are community oriented,

collaborative or that they care much for helping others. In fact, their preference for teamwork is

ascribed to either behavioural conditioning during their schooling years or risk aversion in terms of

individual decision-making; and their predilection toward volunteerism is attributed to the fact that

community work was a prerequisite to obtain admission into tertiary educational institutions (in the

US) (Twenge, Freeman, & Campbell, 2012; Holt, Marques, & Way, 2012). The research done in support

of the Generation Me paradigm seems to indicate that while the millennials are more civic-minded

than the generation before them (Generation X), they are still substantially behind the curve when

compared to the Baby Boomers, often being labelled slacktivists (ibid.). The challenge with these

studies, regardless of where they are cited, is that most of them relate to the work done by Jean

Twenge and her associates, who firstly used a series of studies on responses from American college /

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university campus-based students and employees over different time frames to substantiate their

claims, and secondly have already been shown to display an observable bias against the millennials as

a group. While the claims themselves may be very accurate and valid, they also potentially represent

a demographic that is too specific to a certain social ecosystem to be representative.

I needed to draw on sources that encapsulated research with a slightly broader reach, which also

considered a stronger organisational slant. To this end, Bannon, Ford and Meltzer (2011, p. 62)

assimilated the findings from multiple survey reports into a very useful table that I have reproduced

below. This view hones in on social responsibility as a theme, but also helps us to explore the other

key traits of the millennials through a less biased lens.

Table 2: Summary of Surveys of Millennials – source:

Bannon, S., Ford, K., & Meltzer, L. (2011, November). Understanding millennials in the workplace. The CPA Journal, p.62

Survey How Generation Defined

Technology Participation

Diversity Social Responsibility Work-Life Balance

Pew Research

Born after 1980

88% text; 75% social networking; 59% Internet as source of news

Most racially tolerant, most diverse generation

Strong moral responsibility

Balanced work ethic

PwC Entered workforce after 2000

92% are members of an online social network

80% would like to work abroad and most expect to use other languages

88% would choose employers whose social responsibility values reflect their own

66% expect to work regular hours with some flexibility

KPMG Born June 1976 - June 1991

Driven by new technology Global perspective Social conscience; volunteering appeals to sense of making a contribution to the greater good

Demand a more balanced mix between work, family, and outside interests

Johnson Controls

Born 1981-1993

Tech-savvy and will bring transformational technological solutions to the world

38% identify as non-white. Inclusive and community minded

96% want an environmentally aware workplace

56% prefer to work flexibly and choose when to work

Deloitte Born 1982-1995

Tech-savvy and connected 24/7

Inclusive 47% value company culture and reputation

63% favour opportunities for growth and development over security; 23% favour flexible work hours

Brill Street

28 years and younger

77%-79% want remote work options and real-time feedback

87% influenced by acceptance of individuality

84% influenced by socially responsible business practices; 53% want a day off to volunteer

92% prefer flexible working hours

ERC Born after 1980

Grew up with e-mail, Internet, cell phones, and immediate access to information; excellent at integrating technology into workplace

Attuned to and appreciative of diversity; connect easily with a greater diversity of races, religions, and sexual orientations

More likely to observe misconduct of other employees; value privacy less; information is to be shared rather than owned

Believe that doing a good job is about the work you do, not how many hours you put in

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Staying with the theme of social responsibility, the table above shows that across a multitude of

varying surveys conducted on working millennials, concerns around social and environmental ethics

were quite prevalent. What is interesting above is that the millennials surveyed through the PWC,

Johnson Controls, Deloitte and Brill Street studies offered more than just their own views on social

responsibility and also linked it to expectations on what the (social and/or environmental) values of

their respective organisations needed to be (Bannon, Ford, & Meltzer, 2011). Valerie Grubb (2017, p.

92) validates these outcomes by stating that “[s]enior leaders need to pay attention to these trends

and should expect the concepts of sustainability and corporate responsibility to increasingly shape

Millennials’ ideas about their own work ethic and their expectations of corporate behaviour.” These

sentiments are by no means isolated and some of these traits referring to their civic-mindedness,

public concern and care for social and environmental issues (and organisational alignment to these)

are referenced in many of the sources, even in some of the works with a Generation Me bias (Ellis,

2010; Espinoza & Ukleja, 2016; Holt, Marques, & Way, 2012; Jerome, Scales, Whithem, & Quain, 2014;

Moritz, 2014; Myers & Sadaghiana, 2010; Stewart, Oliver, Cravens, & Oishi, 2017).

3.4: So how does it become Activism… and what makes it special?

TBWA (a global marketing and public relations firm) commissioned a study around the future of social

activism (TBWA, 2012) in nine countries, including South Africa, with 2000 young adults between the

ages of 18 and 29 (i.e. millennials). This study has been condensed into an infographic included as a

series of figures in Appendix A.1: (split due to size). It highlights the prevalence of the youth in these

countries (56% overall, and 61% in South Africa) to actively support causes that they care about, in

new and enhanced ways that extend activism beyond just visible (physical) mass action and

volunteerism, spreading it into the digital world across a multitude of channels. This augmented

definition of activism, as introduced at the beginning of this discourse is also supported by Tania Ellis

(2010, p. 96) who explains that “[n]ew expressions of activism both inside and outside organizations

are strengthening the power of society’s civil watchdogs even further.” Both Ellis and the TBWA study

define this new form of activism by its intent and impact, and not its form.

Other than reinforcing the role of social activism among the millennials in the sample group, it also

showcases exactly which causes these youth are most passionate about across the surveyed

geographies. Globally, there are four main themes that are driven across the various selected forms

of social participation. They are education, healthcare, the environment and freedom of speech, with

subtle nuances prevalent in each of the countries represented. In South Africa, access to education

scored top points as the most pressing concern. What is more pertinent is that the youth in this survey,

similar to the sentiments previously shared above, felt that organisations within their countries

needed to get involved in creating a difference across these themes as well. They reported feeling

more aligned and more comfortable advocating for and buying from companies that did so. In fact,

66% of the surveyed millennials even stated that they “would be more likely to seek employment with

a company that supports a cause they care about” (ibid.).

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3.5: Could corporate social responsibility (activism) enhance employee engagement?

This brings us to the topic of employee engagement. There are literally tens of thousands of

publications dealing with this topic, across the fields of management, leadership, sociology,

organisational studies and generation theory itself. The purpose of this treatise is not to redefine what

employee engagement is, but rather to hone in on the status of engagement among the millennial

cohort in general and also to find relevance and possible evidence that could clearly link social activism

as we have defined it to this phenomenon.

What is evident after pouring through all of the previously referenced texts among others, is that

millennials are generally not considered to be as engaged as the generations before them. Many

reasons have been cited for this, the most common drawing us back to the Generation Me argument,

that millennials are too self-involved, are lazy, seek instant gratification and do not wish to follow long

career paths before being promoted into more senior roles (Bannon, Ford, & Meltzer, 2011; Cennamo

& Gardner, 2008; Holt, Marques, & Way, 2012; Martin C. A., 2005; Twenge, Freeman, & Campbell,

2012). There are also clear indications of how their unique generational traits of connectedness,

collaboration, their technical know-how, and the way they embrace diversity are actually assets to

many organisations today (Espinoza & Ukleja, 2016; Grubb, 2017; Jerome, Scales, Whithem, & Quain,

2014). The overwhelming sense that I got from all of these texts however was that most companies

are still struggling to leverage the best of these qualities because they have not yet fully understood

how to make their organisational cultures attractive enough to retain millennial talent in ways that

they believe are logical; and maybe that’s the point. In fact, Stewart, et al’s (2017, p. 48) research done

on workplace culture has shown that “[u]nlike employees from the Baby Boomer or Gen X groups, the

millennials’ results show no relationship between organizational commitment and workplace culture”

and that the organisation “could be a great place to work, yet the millennial workers would not be any

more committed than if it were a lousy place to work.” Tania Ellis (2010, p. 68) adds that “[e]mployees

of the knowledge age have … a ‘desire to shape their jobs to fit their lives rather than adapt their lives

to the workplace.’” The employee rulebooks are mostly outdated and most senior managers in large

organisations are either Baby Boomers or Generation Xers (Jerome, Scales, Whithem, & Quain, 2014;

Van Ness, Melinsky, Buff, & Seifert, 2010), with an outmoded understanding of what a typical career

should look like.

This has led to many productive theories on how to better engage millennials by appealing to their

traits and creating a better fit from an intergenerational perspective. They include many ideas

including an “inclusive style of management, participative decision-making, innovation support, and

challenging work” (Martin C. A., 2005); personal and developmental mentorship (Naim & Lenka, 2017;

Weirich, 2017); and “family/work balance, job mobility, being part of a socially minded organization,

flexible hours, and … fairness when comparing compensation packages with other companies’” (Holt,

Marques, & Way, 2012, p. 91). A recent EMBA graduate, S. Zandile Ndlovu (2015) also did quite an

extensive dissertation on millennial engagement and showcased eight key themes or practices as she

called them that would appeal to millennials and create more stickiness if they were adopted as a

unified engagement model. These were: gamification, culture, gig-economy, transformational

leadership, opportunities for growth, collaborative tribes, future workspace and purposeful business.

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Without going into detail on each of the practices (some of which are already described in the

previously cited literature), this was an excellent piece of work that brought together many of the

conversations around Generation Me, We and the intergenerational dynamics at play in organisations

today, with a clear journey map toward enhancing employee engagement overall. Many of these

practices, while very valid and apt, could be said to be either tweaks on existing leadership practices

or internal business innovation necessary for success in the 21st century and quite a few of them are

already being implemented in a variety of ways across many industries. I personally feel that they are

all the right things to be doing as we move toward better engagement of the millennials in our

organisations – but the discussion is not complete.

As already noted, my research has paid especial attention to an area or practice that I consider worthy

of more critical examination; that of social activism as it relates to the alignment of the millennials’

values to those of the organisation. While social responsibility, environmental ethics and purposeful

business practices as it relates to this topic are all mentioned in the various texts and proposals

presented (ibid.), what I struggled to find were any examples of companies that had actually tested

the impact of aligning their workforce to specific social and / or environmental campaigns. By this I

am not simply referring to companies having generic corporate social responsibility (CSR), citizenship

or philanthropic agendas; these are a dime a dozen in this age of triple bottom line reporting

(Moneyweb, 2016). I am also not merely referring to companies who sanction free time for their

employees to volunteer or get involved in social causes that they care about, although there is enough

research that indicates that “[m]illennials also value time off and the opportunity to participate in

community or social responsibility projects during company time” (Espinoza & Ukleja, 2016, p. 66).

There are a few examples of these, like Citigroup in the US that offers “year-long leaves for charitable

work” (Stewart, Oliver, Cravens, & Oishi, 2017, p. 47) and PWC who offer four-week sabbaticals as

incentives during which employees “can pursue an interest, travel, volunteer, or stay at home with

the family” (Moritz, 2014, p. 43). I was looking for company-sponsored social responsibility programs

being used as an engagement practice and, while these may exist, I could find no documented cases

of the same. There is however enough literature that supports the idea. According to Valerie Grubb

(2017, p. 93) “a Hewitt and Associates study found that employees at companies that prioritize

sustainability and social responsibility tend to be more engaged and committed”. “In fact, employees

working in companies with clear corporate responsibility programmes tend to stay in their jobs longer

and be more satisfied with senior management than their peers at companies with lacklustre

programmes” adds Tania Ellis (2010, p. 70). She also cites studies that “show that the best people and

students are attracted to companies that fulfil the deep, personal need for meaning while making

contributions to society that go beyond making a profit, and that they link brand reputation to the

company’s record in addressing environmental and social impacts.”

3.6: Concluding thoughts and next steps

This literature review has provided a glimpse on the millennials as a group, honing in on a multitude

of their traits and considering whether they are self-indulgent narcissists or selfless philanthropists;

or more realistically, something in between. More specifically, we have delved into whether their

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documented concern for the wellbeing of the earth and other people could translate into a form of

social activism if, when directed through the efforts of the organisation, could translate into more

engaged and loyal employees. The literature review, while making a strong enough case to say that

this could be true, has not yielded a lot of evidence to show that this has been achieved in reality, or

to say how it could be achieved more specifically by providing a blueprint for other companies to

follow. In the next chapter, I step away from the musings and experiments of others and into my own

world, where I shall attempt to provide the reader with a more reflexive and ethnographical account

on how this topic has unfolded within my own context.

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Chapter 4: A few ethnographical perspectives

The previous chapter shared the insights and understandings emerging from the focused literature

review that constituted the first part of my research. It remains to give the reader a better sense of

my own context, by sharing the data collected by a series of methods including interviews,

conversations, personal observations, facilitation of focus groups, and coordination of activity

designed to test certain propositions. I shall detail the process I followed in the pages that follow, but

as a first step offer two vignettes, that can be seen as ethnographic perspectives derived from my

immersion in the topic. As someone who straddles the gap between Generation-X and the Millennials,

I felt that it is important that I show my part in the story, as my mindset inevitably colours its telling.

4.1: Vignette #1 – the enterprise development dilemma

When I introduced the reader to the concept of my organisation’s Shared Growth strategy at the

beginning of this discourse, I advised that it stood on the three pillars of: education and skills; financial

inclusion; and enterprise development. Enterprise development incorporates activities that are in

support of entrepreneurial activities and are able stimulate the growth of small businesses operating

within the communities that we serve. In-house, we have a small team of bankers in each province

responsible for the financial education of these small business owners, as well as providing them with

support on business plans and facilitating the access to growth funding. The overarching aim is also to

get them to be strong enough to tender as suppliers within the supply-chains of various larger

corporates and across industries relevant to their products and/or services, thus creating scale and

employment. The principle behind this pillar is that small businesses are much better suited to

stimulate economic growth and create job opportunities at a grass roots level in a sustainable manner,

compared to corporates who are seeking efficiency and a centralisation of resources. This idea is

becoming increasingly popular in the market and other corporates have also cottoned on to the idea,

as it has the added benefit of contributing positively to Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment

(BBBEE) scorecards as well as the company’s triple bottom line reporting and any associated incentives

it may receive (especially in South Africa).

This brings me to my engagement with Citizen X, a Gen-Xer who is the CEO of a local business forum

that works to bring corporates and government entities together for networking and alignment on

key projects. As a representative of one of the corporate members of this forum, I was aware of the

forum’s aim to create a collaborative enterprise supplier development (ESD) vehicle and establish a

unified platform through which all the member corporates and government entities (where relevant)

could channel their efforts in order to create support to, and supply chain opportunities for, local

entrepreneurs. This plan was announced last year, in 2016 already and after almost a year I felt it was

ideal to open a dialogue with Citizen X to discuss the project and his experiences to date. The following

account represents his feedback to me, collected over three separate unstructured interviews, using

his own sentiments and paradigms on the situation. Wherever necessary, I probed in order to get

more detail and also to ensure that I covered the conversation in a manner that the four phronetic

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questions could be answered as well. I also quote directly in certain instances to ensure that we do

not lose his context as I am conveying the story.

Citizen X relayed how he had taken the time to ensure that this plan made sense and was both feasible

and plausible. In his mind, if corporates and government pooled their resources, we would be able to

achieve greater scale and reach more entrepreneurs, in a more meaningful way. He reckoned that we

would also be able to create a more comprehensive network of small businesses, corporates, public

sector entities and other support roleplayers, that would enable a much broader supply chain matrix

and keep the costs down while allowing “an abundance of opportunities” for the entrepreneurs

involved. He told me that after building the business case he had even gone through the effort of

registering this ESD vehicle as a separate entity so as to keep it independent and ensure that it was

able to fulfil its purpose without being steered by any entity other than the workstream council that

would be responsible for its operation. Post all of the preparatory work, Citizen X then went about

approaching various corporate members, targeting those with the most financial resources and who

already had ED/ESD programs on their agendas. He also approached government and other publicly-

owned enterprises to bring them on board and this is where he says his “disillusionment set in.” While

everyone bought into the plan, loved the idea and saw the merit and the benefit to the local economy,

not many corporates were willing to jump in “boots and all.” He found himself faced with some of the

following objections / comments:

• “We’re afraid that government will use our funding and take all the credit for the work done.”

• “We have our own mandates to fulfil and the funds must be used in the following way…”

• “We don’t want the [non-transformed] corporates using this to bolster their BEE ratings just by

throwing their money at it.”

• “We cannot spend all our money and have no control of where it goes.”

• “I am all for this, but I represent a bigger brand…”

What was scary was that everyone understood what needed to happen and why it was the right thing

to do, yet, in his words, “were immobilised by bureaucracy” and “waiting for others to act first.” In

certain instances, he even went to the national offices of these institutions to talk with who he thought

would be the decision-makers. Yet found himself stone-walled in another way with the following

rhetoric:

• “We cannot just do things in Cape Town and not do it everywhere else!”

• “We have to be very careful of being seen to align to the DA-government.”

His opinion of all of this was that people were more interested in protecting their own territories,

being seen to be “career-guys” and not getting into trouble than what they were willing to do the right

thing, or at least “doing the right thing better than trying to do it on their own.” He added an example

of only three individuals, not very high-ranking, who were willing to jump in with whatever was at

their disposal and make a go of it. While he gave me their names I will not share it here, so I asked him

to describe them to me and all three of them are mid-career managers, younger than 35.

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I challenged him a bit on his need for financial mandates and resources when I asked him why the

“pooling of funds” was important to him. I offered that maybe the excuses that he was getting was

linked to the fact that people need to account for money spent within their own balance sheets or run

the risk of calling it a “write-off” or “charitable donation” and this may be why people were hesitant

to jump in immediately, specifically where they were part of larger corporates. He countered that

putting money in would show commitment to the project and disallow people from “merely adding

their names to the letterhead.” I said that I took his point, but then offered that as a junior executive

within my own organisation I had a limited “free” budget for non-operational expenditure, but a full

operational mandate over many other resources. I said that someone like me would gladly get

involved if there wasn’t a price tag attached to participation. He responded by saying that there’s

“always room for other support,” “but we need the big guns to put the funds in first”.

I left this interaction feeling a little jaded myself. I believe fully in what he is trying to achieve, but I

think that failing to think beyond the “capital” or “equity” required to fund the event is delaying its

progress. I also had a thought that while seeking collaboration from others, the plan was not borne of

such collaboration and this may also be contributing to the resistance it is receiving. As I write this,

Citizen X is still working to get this project off the ground.

4.2: Vignette #2 – Kreeate, a limited test for staff participation in Shared Growth

I met Alexander McLeod1 through a mutual connection. She felt that he needed some corporate

backing for the work that he was doing to develop entrepreneurial skills with high school students.

Alexander is a qualified Chartered Accountant who had previously held a stable role with one of the

top global firms in Cape Town. He gave up his permanent job in order to fulfil his passion of developing

entrepreneurial skills in the youth with the aim of inculcating the entrepreneurial spirit in them and

hopefully inspiring more of them to start their own businesses. When she had last discussed it with

him, he had been running a series of after-school programs; offering his workshops at a fee at more

affluent schools in Cape Town and then using those funds to offer his workshops for free at schools

where the pupils could not afford the cover charge. By the time I met him, things had changed quite

a bit from the context that our mutual acquaintance had given me. Alexander had since started a

company called Kreeate (whose prospectus I have included as Appendix A.3: Kreeate – Prospectus and

Links on page A-5) and had launched a gaming application (App) that had been tested at schools during

the previous year and had subsequently been approved by the Western Cape Education Department

for rollout to more schools. This App, aimed at high school learners, is essentially a game that allows

the player to set up businesses, complete with registration and taxes and then start trading within a

simulated online world. The aim of the game is to earn coins and top a leader board for incentives, all

the while learning about the intricacies of entrepreneurship. For additional coins, users could also

complete a series of quizzes that are all linked to the high school Economic and Management Sciences

1 Real name used, with permission.

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(EMS) and Business Studies curricula, thereby affording learners the opportunity to revise their

schoolwork while playing the game. The App also allows educators to have sight of the quiz results of

the learners that they are accountable for and thus acts as a closed-loop teaching aide as well. In its

pilot phase, the App demonstrated two key results: (a) a clear majority of the learners who were

introduced to the App, downloaded it and started playing without any further prompting from either

the Kreeate team or their teachers; and (b) the learners who were playing and doing the online quizzes

also displayed improved recall of their subject curricula and their grade test results improved. These

results are what led to the support the team received from the education department. Alexander and

his two partners have worked hard to keep the App relevant and ensure that it remains both

entertaining and educational, while trying to remove the element of data costs from the users by

allowing players to play offline until they were ready to save their progress online. With a target of

rollout to a further 200 schools, Alexander was now faced with the constraint of having no manpower

to proceed with the socialisation across the province at selected high schools.

This introduction afforded me the opportunity to get involved with Alexander and Kreeate by offering

him the resources to commence with his rollout. Ostensibly, I would use the opportunity that it

presented to have my staff trained up on the Kreeate App and then facilitate the rollout to various

learners and educators at the selected school, but also piggyback on these sessions to introduce Absa

and our free Youth Account, the Mega U to the learners for account activation. That was the

commercial reason. However, I immediately saw the tie-in to our Shared Growth strategy in what

Alexander was busy with. With education and skills being a key pillar of the program, I felt that it would

also represent the perfect opportunity to get my staff, especially millennials involved in a focussed

program with clear social aims addressing an educational need in society, backed by the organisation.

I could then test the impact that it has on them, and despite the short timelines, I would still be able

to assess whether there were any gains in terms of employee engagement, at the very least a shift in

sentiment toward the organisation among those employees who participated. I was counting on the

staff members getting excited as they saw the impact of what they were doing on the youth. On the

basis of this Alexander and I agreed on a broad scope for initial implementation that would roughly

follow the flight plan below.

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Figure 3: Kreeate / Absa Rollout Flight Plan

All of this happened at the beginning of July and I had about two weeks to select and assemble a team

that would form part of this work. I had initially considered making this team a sample group of

millennials and working with them as a research group, but I realised that as the leader of the business,

also being involved in the project with them, the influence of my institutional power would challenge

their ability to contribute to surveys and questionnaires authentically (Flyvbjerg, Making organization

research matter: Power, values and phronesis, 2006). It made far more sense to use ethnographic

principles and keep the interaction as natural as possible in order to gauge the results and also apply

a phronetic social science lens to my observations. I also felt that in order to distance myself from the

division of duties and execution of the rollout, I needed to select a fairly senior coordinator in order

to organise the team.

I approached one of the Area Heads reporting into me since I knew that she had a soft spot for young

employees and would be energised to work with a team of millennials. Together, we selected a team

of 25 staff members, of which twenty were millennials and the remaining five were Gen-Xers. The

team comprised of four frontline sales and service staff members, two of our Digital Eagles and the

balance were Branch Managers. When making the selection, we needed to consider the following:

• Age and tenure (variety within the millennial grouping)

• General disposition (positive, can-do behaviour was favoured)

• Ability to interface with school administration

• Ability to facilitate and engage people in dialogue

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• Ability to manage own time and schedule interventions accordingly

We then approached the selected individuals to ask if they were interested in participating in the

project, of which all except one accepted (she was scheduled to take annual leave). We then invited

the team to the training session which would be co-facilitated by the Area Head, Alexander and myself.

We took the time to contextualise the project and also talk a bit about how their support of this project

tied in with Absa’s Shared Growth strategy. I found the outcomes of this conversation to be of

immediate relevance to my study, and confirming a suspicion I had held before undertaking this

research, it turned out that only half of the group could give me a comprehensive explanation of what

the Shared Growth strategy was about. Two people did not link it to citizenship at all and thought that

it had something to do with a small business cooperative venture. We embraced all of it as a learning

experience and used the lack of consistent knowledge as conversation points to move between Absa

and Kreeate’s roles throughout the session.

The energy was quite high and almost everyone except two of the invitees were excited to be a part

of the rollout once they understood exactly what was required. The two individuals who were less

enthusiastic were both Gen-Xers and throughout the session they were concerned around matters

like how much time it would take out of their normal workdays, whether they would be given

equipment to use, whether someone else would be able to cover for them if they could not attend,

whether they were compelled to do this once they have signed up, etc. The rest of the group were

eager to get on with the presentations and start setting up the appointments at the schools. We

concluded the training session with the conviction that we had at least 20 individuals upon whom we

could rely in order to successfully conduct this assignment.

Alexander had set up the session with the educators on the Friday of the previous week and had

invited the Area Head to attend with him. He had requested time during a regional educator’s forum

in order to leverage having an auditorium full of educators (from at least 100 schools) available to

engage. The Area Head took two of the Branch Managers who would attend the training with her and

together they socialised the faculty around the Kreeate App and the education department’s support

for further rollout at their schools. I did not attend, but the feedback from Alexander and my team

was that there was great interest from at least half of the room during the session. Through

observation, they felt that most of the interest seemed to come from the school principals and

subject-heads in the room. I questioned the relative ages of the educators who were most keen on

introducing the Kreeate App at their school, but it appeared to not be isolated to any one generation

in particular. Within this sample group the interest appeared to be linked to the realm of responsibility

of the educator, rather than their own demographic situation.

The process of setting up the appointments then commenced and this is where the work actually

began for my team. With a lofty goal of trying to reach 200 schools within the third school term, we

had split the group into four teams in order to try and cover four different geographies across the

Cape Metropole. This start a process of cold-calling that we had initially assumed would be a lot easier

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to do due to the socialisation session that the educators had been through. However, the team really

struggled to gain confirmed appointments. This led to Alexander eventually trying to make a few calls

himself (with similar results) and then ultimately appointing a young intern to do all the calling, which

was proving to be too time-consuming for a fulltime Absa staff member to do with such a low success

rate. Some of the feedback gleaned from this activity and why it had become so onerous included the

following:

• The original attendee at the educators’ forum was often not the key individual responsible to

accept the appointment on behalf of the school.

• The key individual did not respond to calls and did not return messages.

• The key individual, while apparently interested, cited other predetermined activities on the school

agenda that made committing to an appointment within the term a challenge.

• The key individual requested later dates due to exam preparation pressures.

We ultimately managed to secure dates and times to rollout to twenty-five schools during the third

term of the 2017 school year. Of these 5 were schools that had honoured the commitment made at

the educators’ session, the additional 20 schools picked up the invitation and allowed us to visit and

speak with the learners and educators. What this meant for the us, was that we eventually only

required participation from about 10 of the original Absa team members due to the low number of

schools participating. The advantage in this was that we could send more staff members to each

rollout in support of each other. It also allowed for more flexibility and repeat visits to the schools

where required. Despite the lower number of schools, actual registrations as at the end of September

(from new learners, playing the game) was already hitting the one thousand mark. This was still good

news for Kreeate, since word-of-mouth would ensure that this number continued to escalate as more

learners shared their experiences and starting climbing the game’s leader boards. Alexander also kept

the team informed post each school visit and allowed them to share in the fruits of their labours. He

also invited the relevant Absa staff members with him to the schools for prize handovers as learners

won the weekly inventive prizes. I advised Alexander that I would confirm the final number of

registrations with him at the end of the year. For this period, I was more interested in the staff

member’s experience in having gone through the process and being part of a company-supported

social cause that could potentially translate into an education gain and also support our economic

drive for more entrepreneurs in the long run.

I solicited this feedback by requesting it from the Area Head who had coordinated the program for

me, as well as inviting any of the staff members on the team to email or call me with feedback that

they wanted to share about the program and how they felt. I left the question intentionally broad so

as to sweep as many perspectives in as possible and to avoid directing their thinking into any specific

channel. Below I have summarised some of the feedback received from the team involved in the

Kreeate project, either paraphrasing or quoting directly from the recipient. I must note that four of

the team members decided to send me feedback via WhatsApp, as opposed to the two options that I

had put on the table, again pointing to the assertion made in the literature that millennials would

communicate on platforms that they felt more comfortable using.

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Figure 4: Staff members' feedback on Kreeate

Over and above this, I also had a more detailed conversation with three of the staff members, all

millennials, who participated in the program in order to gauge their feelings around what they had

been doing. The overall sentiment was quite positive. All three informants referred to being energised

by the experience (which made me realise that the word “energise” had become company jargon) and

that it had given them a sense of fulfilment that made the effort of setting up the appointments

worthwhile. With these three I asked more specific questions around:

(a) the value of supporting specific social causes as part of a company-sanctioned program,

(b) if it changed anything in terms of how they felt about the company,

(c) whether they did any volunteering (or similar efforts) outside of the work context, and

(d) how we could improve on it, if they did support it.

Their responses on my three specific questions were more divergent than the general feedback was

and I have tabulated their responses below.

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Table 3: Responses from conversants - Kreeate

Conversant A B C

• Value in company-sponsored social activity?

He agreed that it gave him an outlet for the good that he wanted to do, but didn’t find the time for in his personal capacity.

She said that she opted in because she had been wanting to do something good that wasn’t just a CSI donation.

She felt that this one also had a commercial angle and wasn’t just doing good for the sake of doing good, but at the same time, she said that it made the commercial bit feel like an easier conversation to have.

• Sentiments around company?

He spoke of feeling warmer toward the company after having done the activity, especially watching the kids’ responses

She felt that this is what we needed to do all along, become part of the society and communities that we work in.

Neutral around company-sentiment, although it was positive to begin with and loves working at Absa.

• Other volunteering efforts?

No time outside of work and young family

Yes, but all church-related. Yes, does palliative care in the community.

• Suggestions for improvement

More time to plan and possibly a bigger support team

Would also want to partner with local school governing bodies to look at other ways of improving educational outcomes in less privileged schools

Perhaps develop a menu of programs that staff could choose from to get involved in. They could then form teams with set dates, times and activities throughout the year.

Feels like we could have done more, but not sure of what exactly that would be. Feels like there is too much to do in South Africa.

Overall, the Kreeate project was a good way to dip my toes into the water when it came to trying to

implement a company-sponsored project that addresses a key social concern. It was not lost on me

that the TBWA survey also pointed to education as a major concern for South African millennials

(TBWA, 2012); or that Alexander, (mostly) a millennial himself, gave up his fulltime job to pursue this

passion of his. As a team, this has been a great partnership for us. It allowed us to get involved

practically in a way that supports our Shared Growth strategy, but also to build commercial relevance

with the schools that we visited. Part of our school offering would normally be to drive a “teach a child

to save” campaign along with our Mega U account drive. We avoided mixing campaigns during this

rollout with Kreeate choosing instead to focus on the activation of the App, which was the right thing

to do in order to honour the agreement with Alexander. Next year however, I think that we need a

fully-fledged “School Activation Plan” that incorporates better planning and a few more elements. I

guess that I have also been “energised” by this project just like my team has been.

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4.3: Summarising narrative

In this chapter I have shared two vignettes that form separate narratives of my personal immersion

into the subject of social activism and millennial engagement. The first is an account of how someone

who is struggling to do the right thing by supporting entrepreneurs in a meaningful way through

corporate engagement is struggling to gain commitment from the majority of senior leaders in

business, who are not millennials. The second is a tale describing my own field test of implementing a

company-sponsored venture (within my own business) in support of someone doing good work in the

field of education with high school learners and chronicling its impact on the staff members who

participated in the project. In the next chapter I shall extract all of these perspectives along with the

insights gleaned from my literature review for analysis and interpretation, toward a theory than can

be explored in greater detail.

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Chapter 5: Analysis & Findings

In the previous chapter I shared a narrative account of my own immersion in the research topic via

two stories that have practical relevance to the subject matter of this discourse. In this chapter, I will

take both the insights gleaned through the literature review, as well as my primary research material

and analyse them using the two Flexons I have described in the methodology section of this paper as

problem-solving lenses. These Flexons will also help to triangulate the multiple perspectives gathered

throughout the research process and help me to: (a) determine the most salient issues upon which to

focus, and (b) provide more clarity on the causal relationships at play on a practical level. I will

furthermore use grounded theory techniques to categorise these insights into variables which will

then be used as part of the Integrative Thinking framework to help develop a more specific and useful

descriptive theory (the architecture phase of the Integrative Thinking process) to address my research

question as part of the findings of the work concluded.

5.1: Zooming in on what is salient – the evolutionary flexon

As previously discussed, my research topic represents a slice out of a much broader discussion on

millennial engagement. I am specifically focussing on the possibility of leverage social activism as an

additional engagement practice within this context. As such, it is key that I focus only on the most

salient points for consideration. I have selected the evolutionary flexon, and more specifically Roger

Martin’s (2007) Knowledge funnel as the tool with which to achieve this. The Knowledge funnel asks

the user to consider a variety of factors that form part of the mystery that they are trying to unravel

and by trying to understand the mechanisms that allow this situation to unfold, allows said user to

look at the factors that are most pertinent and would allow them to either make sense of the mystery

or work toward a predictable outcome.

In order to achieve the results envisioned, I assimilated the data that I gathered through my literature

review, the dialogue on the enterprise development scenario as well as the Kreeate project and

through a process of coding and sorting, extracted the categories and themes that emerged from all

three data sources. This was done without giving preference to whether the data was positive or

negative, or whether it supported my original assumptions or not. All that it required was that I look

at the high-level themes that emerged and once I was comfortable that I had combined these into

those that were most prevalent, I could filter them through the lens of the knowledge funnel as shown

in Figure 5 below. As a caveat, the information being “poured” into the top of the funnel tends to be

the extreme behaviours either referred to in the literature review, or the primary data. The funnel

itself mediates this data with the questions it forces the user to ask (as shown on the side). This

allowed me to distinguish between these behaviours and (using the same dataset), the heuristics that

allow these behaviours to emerge. By focussing only on the items relevant to millennial engagement

in the context of company-sponsored social activism, I was able to extract three algorithmic themes

or devices that would allow me to work more productively within the realm of concern.

To my surprise, while the answers make perfect sense to me, I was not expecting exactly what

emerged from this exercise.

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Figure 5: Knowledge funnel as a lens to determine salience

As is evidenced above, the funnelling of the themes that were most pertinent to my research, allowed

the following perspectives to emerge as those that were the most salient in terms of ensuring a better

outcome:

• Integrating company and individual (employee) values, which is probably the least surprising

outcome of the three.

• Balancing the HR model to incorporate extrinsic value-creation opportunities, which is just a fancy

way of saying that the employee job-framework needs to look beyond internal motivation factors

and include factors outside of the organisation as well.

• Company CSR strategies must include new participation channels, which does not only say that

companies need to focus and direct social projects, but that they need to speak to the ways in

which the millennial engages with the world as well, including digital channels.

These are the three focus areas that I will then combine with the insights from the next Flexon in order

to consolidate my findings into a practical theory for consideration.

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5.2: Appreciating causality through the decision-agent flexon

For the next Flexon, I was tempted to draw a series of pictures and then map out the perspectives

that would mediate the communication flow between the concerned parties and consequently the

decisions that would be made. However, I decided to take a difference approach with this one. It was

Moldoveanu and Leclerc’s (2015, p. 59) statement that “decision agents act in ways that maximise

their own payoffs and interests and not necessarily those of the business” that made me realise that

I needed to take a slightly deeper look at the root perspectives of the agents that I would use as a

sample base. I therefore decided to use a synthesised version of the CATWOE model, as originally

developed by Peter Checkland, in order to fully consider these perspectives. For this lens, I am not

using the literature view, and only focussing on each one of the primary data sources, where I have

real actors to consider. I have split the analysis and done a separate exercise for each of the vignettes

shared in Chapter 4. After working through both CATWOEs, I will recombine the themes that emerge

to provide one view.

5.2.1: Vignette # 1 – the enterprise dilemma

I have grouped the stakeholders described by Citizen X into groups, firstly to consider the perspectives

of the decision agents at the correct level of recursion, but also to allow for greater generalisation of

the outcomes, which will be useful in the next step. I have also used the information he shared in our

discussion to inform this analysis and where absent, I have considered the potential payoffs and risks

to each for a thicker description.

Table 4: Synthesised CATWOE on Vignette #1

A. Citizen X (as Owner)

Root Perspective: The corporate leaders are short-sighted and protective of their own interests, which they place above the importance of this initiative.

Customers (beneficiaries & victims)

Corporate leaders, Government representatives, Public sector leaders, Small businesses / Entrepreneurs

Actors Corporate teams, Forum members, Government, Public enterprise teams

Transformation

Citizen X anticipated forming a working group that would use the combined resources of various corporate organisations and government entities to provide entrepreneurial support, access to funding and supply-chain opportunities to local small businesses for growth

World-view Citizen X believes that the pooling of resources via the business forum unit being established is the only way to offer collaborative support to small enterprises.

Owners Citizen X – as leader of the business forum and project sponsor

Environment (important issues over which they have no control)

The current economic climate; the fact that corporates have a mandate to drive ED/ESD as part of their own operations; BBBEE-coding and incentives; Politics between government and corporates.

B. Corporate leaders (as Victims)

Root Perspective: Citizen X is not considering the needs of his corporate members and is asking for more than we can give without certain economic assurances and rights.


Business Forum, Own client base and networks, Small businesses / Entrepreneurs

Actors Subject-matter experts within the corporate entity, other forum members, recipients

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Transformation The corporate leaders will be expected to approve and fund the involvement in the ESD workgroup, which represents a contribution of funds, resources and their brand names and reputation attached to the project.

World-view

The corporate leaders are concerned that investing their ESD resources in this forum may: (a) Work against their own corporate mandates and BBBEE-incentive

structures. (b) Allow other corporates and local government / public sector teams to

take credit without making the same / similar investments. (c) Become a challenge if not applied nationally (where relevant).

Owners Citizen X on behalf of the business forum


The current economic climate; the fact that corporates have a mandate to drive ED/ESD as part of their own operations; BBBEE-coding and incentives; Politics between government and corporates. National versus Local needs and funding mechanisms.

C. Government / Public sector representatives (as Beneficiaries and Actors)

Root Perspective: We don’t want to get too involved in case we get accused of alignment to party politics (national) We want to show that the Western Cape can do it better than national (local)


Business forum, Entrepreneurial recipients, Corporates and Government

Actors Government employees, forum members, recipients

Transformation The government roleplayers will provide human resources and access to governmental programs and supply chains in support of the ESD vehicle. The ability to provide funding breaks are stymied by their worldview.

World-view

• Government (national) is concerned that it will be seen to be supporting WC ideals as part of a DA-campaign. They are also concerned that corporate roleplayers will use this drive to avoid transformation objectives on their own.

• Local government want to outshine national government.

Owners Citizen X on behalf of the business forum, Government in terms of certain programs


The current economic climate; the fact that corporates have a mandate to drive ED/ESD as part of their own operations; BBBEE-coding and incentives; Politics between government and corporates. National versus Local needs and funding mechanisms.

D. Me, Local business leader and forum member (as Scrutiniser)

Root Perspective: This project is stuck because of a mindset focussed on power and control. True collaboration does not need a mandate.


Business forum, Entrepreneurial recipients

Actors Subject-matter experts from within company, Forum members, recipients

Transformation As a forum member, drive the programs that would provide opportunities for business support, access to funding and supply-chain opportunities to recipients.

World-view Money is not the most important motivator or the fulcrum in this decision. What is more important is that each member brings value to the project and uses their networks to support the entrepreneurs identified.

Owners Citizen X on behalf of the forum, Me on behalf of my business locally.


Sponsorship mandates and the allocation of funding for Shared Growth. The current economic climate; the fact that corporates have a mandate to drive ED/ESD as part of their own operations; BBBEE-coding and incentives; Politics between government and corporates. National versus Local needs and funding mechanisms.

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5.2.2: Vignette #2 – Kreeate

Table 5: Synthesised CATWOE on Kreeate

A. Alexander McLeod (as Owner)

Root Perspective: I need the backing of corporates and the education authorities in order to deliver my product, but I still want to maintain control over my creation and keep the focus pure.


High school learners, Educators, Parents, Education department, Corporate sponsors

Actors Educators, Corporate sponsors, Kreeate team, Education department

Transformation As learners play the game they develop business acumen and entrepreneurial skills that can help them through school and impact on their choices afterwards.

World-view Kreeate is a solution that addresses the need for entrepreneurial skills in learners in a way that is engaging and speaks to their engagement preferences.

Owners Kreeate


Current school priorities, Politics among the education professionals, Funding and resource capabilities, Corporate appetite to get involved.

B. Me, as Collaborator, Researcher, Business Leader, Millennial (Actor and Scrutiniser)

Root Perspective: It feels good to do the right thing and still achieve my own objectives.


High school learners, Alexander (Kreeate), Absa as a brand, Absa staff involved, Educators

Actors Absa staff, Alexander, schools engaged

Transformation

Absa staff will facilitate the appointments at schools, do the knowledge transfer and do demos of the Kreeate game to high school learners and educators in order to elicit registrations. They will also use the opportunity to position Absa favourably and talk about Youth accounts where possible

World-view

Getting involved with Kreeate allows me to do the following:

• Research my dissertation topic

• Engage in social activism while still acting favourably on behalf of my business

• Generate a sense of purpose among my staff who get involved in the program

Owners Me (as sponsor), Alexander (Kreeate)


Current school priorities, Politics among the education professionals, Sustainability of the project with national backing and involvement as it grows.

C. Absa Team (as Actors)

Root Perspective: I enjoy making a difference in society and being supported to do so by my company


High school learners, Educators, Kreeate

Actors Absa team, Kreeate support, School faculty

Transformation

Facilitation and demonstration of the Kreeate game to generate registrations among the learners and building a successful relationship with the school faculty to open the doors for future engagement with the learners on banking and a savings culture.

World-view Being able to help learners engage in this manner is energising and being able to do it as part of my job creates goodwill. I don’t enjoy having to navigate my way through the admission gate-keepers.

Owners Haroon (Absa), Alexander (Kreeate)


Current school priorities, Resistance from school faculty, actual uptake / registration and support from educators

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D. School faculty (as both Beneficiaries and Victims)

Root Perspective: We need to do the right thing for our learners, but also protect them from distractions that will not aid in their learning.


High school learners, educators, Kreeate, Absa, Education department

Actors Absa, Educators, Kreeate

Transformation The school needs to create the opportunities for Absa/Kreeate to engage the learners and then support the registration and use of the learner management system through the educators to ensure that learning happens.

World-view

As educators we need to invest in innovation that stimulates learning and growth for our learners. We also need to be seen as educators who are doing the right things for our learners by the authorities. We also need to protect our jobs and status.

Owners Education department, Senior school educators


Education department mandates, Actual uptake from learners, Quality of the facilitators and engagement with the learners and educators.

Having gone through this process of feeding the perspectives that I have either observed or which has

been shared with me through dialogue and conversation, I must admit that it was not an easy task.

Mostly because a CATWOE is usually highly subjective and speculative, and often uses the worst

possible motive as its rationale for a stakeholder’s perspective. However, this is exactly the reason

that I chose it as a tool for analysis. Extreme values lead to themes that are ultimately more useful

being gleaned from a social sciences study. They can describe outcomes that are either at their best

or their worst when causal factors within a system either reinforce or mute them.

Going through the analysis with another process of coding, this time through the use of an Affinity

diagram, specifically looking for behaviours, attitudes and mindset paradigms; I managed to extract

the variables as shown in the diagram on the next page. I have colour-coded them in order to maintain

a line of sight as to whether the original insight derives from the first or second Vignette. The data

extracted pertains only to the perspectives of the stakeholders and therefore rely on the root

perspective and worldview descriptions as essential, with some relevant factors extracted from the

transformation and environment descriptions as well. The balance of the categories that are relevant

to my research have been accounted for in the knowledge funnel and will be combined with this view

in the next section.

What was extremely interesting for me in this analysis, was how even without the inputs from the

literature review, these behaviours that were ascribed to intergenerational dynamics in the readings,

also show up as relevant factors within the practice. I suppose a critic would say that they play out

whenever human beings need to organise and interact and are thus generic factors in social situations,

however their causal influence is strong in the context of my problem situation and played out even

where the alignment between individuals were good.

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Table 6: Affinity diagram showing variables extracted from CATWOEs

Competing Commitments

Desire for purposeful action

Level of Collaboration Consolidation of Power (Control)

Level of Trust Fear of Loss Level of transparency

We need to do the right thing for our learners, but also protect them from distractions that will not aid in their learning.

As educators we need to invest in innovation that stimulates learning and growth for our learners

What is more important is that each member brings value to the project and uses their networks to support the entrepreneurs identified

I need the backing of corporates and the education authorities in order to deliver my product, but I still want to maintain control over my creation and keep the focus pure.

Concerned to allow other corporates and local government / public sector teams to take credit without making the same / similar investments

We also need to be seen as educators who are doing the right things for our learners by the authorities

Kreeate is a solution that addresses the need for entrepreneurial skills in learners in a way that is engaging and speaks to their engagement preferences.

They place their own interests above the importance of this initiative.

Generate a sense of purpose among my staff who get involved in the program

Citizen X is not considering the needs of his corporate members

The pooling of resources is the only way to offer collaborative support to small enterprises.

We don’t want to get too involved in case we get accused of alignment to party politics

Government (national) is concerned that it will be seen to be supporting WC ideals as part of a DA-campaign.

Asking for more than we can give without certain economic assurances and rights

We want to show that the Western Cape can do it better than national

I enjoy making a difference in society and being supported to do so by my company

It feels good to do the right thing and still achieve my own objectives.

This project is stuck because of a mindset focussed on power and control

Politics between government and corporates

They are also concerned that corporate roleplayers will use this drive to avoid transformation objectives on their own.

The ability to provide funding breaks are stymied by their worldview but other reasons are used to justify

Corporates have a mandate to drive ED/ESD as part of their own operations

Access to funding and supply-chain opportunities to local small businesses for growth

Being able to help learners engage in this manner is energising

I don’t enjoy having to navigate my way through the admission gate-keepers.

Politics among the education professionals

Concerned that the plan will work against their own corporate mandates and BBBEE-incentive structures

Corporate appetite to get involved not always clear

Education department mandates create uncertainty for educators

Engage in social activism while still acting favourably on behalf of my business

True collaboration does not need a mandate.

The corporate leaders are short-sighted and protective of their own interests

Current school priorities We also need to protect our jobs and status.

Local government want to outshine national government

Money is not the most important motivator or the fulcrum in this decision

Resistance from school faculty

National versus Local needs and funding mechanisms.

Being able to do it as part of my job creates goodwill

Become a challenge if not applied nationally

LEGEND: VIGNETTE #1 VIGNETTE #2

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5.3: Toward a descriptive theory for action

Taking stock of the research done up to this point, the reader should have noted the following:

• I have researched my problem situation using multiple perspectives,

• Fed through multiple lenses for sense-making, which allowed me to access the most salient

themes and causal relationships at play.

I now needed to put it all together via a theory that could describe my environment and give me

validated insight toward further action. Having synthesised and coded my data throughout this

analysis using grounded theory techniques (including the flexon tools), I had now reached a point

where I had collected key themes and had grouped most of these into categories that appear to be

the core variables that I needed to consider in my specific situation. I then proceeded to combine

these categories as derived through the work done with the two flexons (some of them I renamed and

I also integrated variables that were similar) and tested the relationships between them as shown in

the Interrelationship diagraph (ID) below. The idea behind the use of the ID is to gain a better

understanding of the system dynamics within the problem situation. Each variable would either

impact on, or be impacted on by each of the other variables in a particular way. Sometimes variables

could have a similar impact on each other, but then we select the “driver” by determining which one

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is more likely to have the strongest impact. Variables that have the most impact on others are the

greatest driving forces within the system, and those most impacted upon are usually the outcomes.

The ID below represents the relationships at play within my research context (of millennial

engagement where social activism is a key practice).

Now that I had a better understanding of what my core variables were and how they impacted on

each other, I needed to formulate my theory within the context of my problem situation. The theory

needed to tell the story that my research has uncovered and be able to address my concern as a

plausible narrative. For this purpose, I have opted to use the Context-Mechanism-Outcome (CMO)

conceptual framework (McDonogh, 2016; Ryan, 2016; and de Souza, 2013) as a model where:

• C = the Contextual environment influencing my system, which can be seen as all of the

observable data that has relevance within my system.

• M = the Mechanism driving the behaviour of my system, which I will represent as a causal loop

diagram (or CLD), having taken the variables as shown in the ID above and pieced the

relationships together in a story that explains how these relationships come together in a

dynamic environment.

The level of collaborationwtihin an organisation

The level of control acrossthe organisation

The level of purposefulaction

The degree of competingcommitments

The degree of trust

The level of transparency

The commitment to focusexternally

The fear of loss amongnon-millennials and

senior leaders

The level of integrationbetween company and

individual values

The degree to which CSRprograms cater to

millenial participationpreferences

0 In 9 Out

6 In 3 Out

DRIVER

DRIVER

OUTCOME

OUTCOME

OUTCOME

1 In 8 Out

7 In 2 Out

6 In 3 Out

8 In 1 Out

3 In 6 Out 6 In 3 Out

2 In 7 Out

8 In 1 Out

Figure 6: Interrelationship diagraph (ID) of core variables

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• O = the Outcome, being my concern variable, millennial engagement, not shown within the ID,

which shows the component variables, but ultimately, the organisational goal that I am

interested in enhancing and thus part of the CLD as well.

I have selected the CMO because it is an extremely useful tool for understanding the dynamics at play

within a system and facilitates design thinking better than most other models I have personally used.

My CMO contains the narrative of my theory as derived through the work done in this assignment.

Figure 7: CMO of problem situation

The green represents the contextual environment, also defined as the “mystery” realm when we

analysed the situation through the lens of the evolutionary flexon (knowledge funnel). These are the

themes gathered through the literature review and field work done and describes the environment

around the engagement of the millennial worker in the context of social activism. The contextual

environment impacts on my system, either driving or restraining the most salient, causal (behavioural)

variables determined through our analysis. These core variables make up the mechanism that provide

us with the descriptive theory around the forces impacting on millennial engagement in our specific

context.

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The CMO tells the following story. Millennial engagement in general (our desired outcome) is

improved when millennials find fulfilment at work. This represents them at their best, displaying one

of the key millennial traits that organisations are trying to harness, which is collaboration. The more

collaborative an environment, the higher the degree of trust that is built within that organisation. The

converse also being true when millennials are not happy. Lower trust heightens the fear of loss among

non-millennials, which has emanated clearly as a theme out of our research thus far. As this fear

escalates among non-millennials, including senior leaders who work on a different paradigm to the

millennials, they start struggling with their choices, often choosing what is right for them, above what

is right for the team, the organisation or others. All of these alternatives may be important, but the

focus will now go to what they can account for and control. As they cling to control and power, the

level of transparency reduces across the organisation and with it, collaboration reduces even more.

This behaviour forms a reinforcing causal loop that I have called the Fear and Control cycle, which can

either be a vicious or virtuous cycle depending on the contextual environment and the forces

impacting on it. This cycle on its own can destroy millennial engagement, and is relevant both inside

and outside the context of social activism. Various versions of it are covered in the literature and are

part of the intrinsic drivers of engagement across all generations. It remains important however,

because if we do not get this cycle to a positive state, we may as well not do anything further. This is

the cycle that speaks to leadership and team culture within an environment.

The second cycle is where we move specifically to the extrinsic factors. Our search for salience has

shown that organisations need to start focussing on external motivators in order to engage the

millennials as well. This commitment will only be achieved if the environment is not too controlling or

restrictive. Being committed to focussing externally will also give the organisation the impetus to

redesign its CSR menu to include social activism communication channels that speak to the millennial’s

preferences, through which the millennials will be able to fulfil their desire for purposeful action via a

company sponsored program, thus aligning their own values with those of the organisation that they

work for. As this integration improves, so too does the commitment to keep a keen focus on what is

happening outside, again creating a virtuous cycle. At the same time, this integration between the

company and the millennial employee works to enhance millennial engagement and plough positive

collaboration back into the team environment.

The two cycles together form part of the overall engagement cycle for the millennial employee and

what I appreciate the most about this theory is that while it clearly shows social activism as a viable

engagement practice for the millennial employee, it does so in the context of a bigger system and with

the understanding that the leadership cycle is a key dependency to the healthy functioning of the

points that are most salient to social activism.

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5.4: Findings

The analysis of my research has allowed me to extract key theoretical and practical insights related to

millennial engagement in the context of social activism and explore how this would work in practice

with a bit more detail than what I have previously found. While I have not been able to practically

measure the impact of my fieldwork in terms of a comprehensive engagement study, due to the timing

and scope of work done, I have sufficient evidence both through my immersion in the process and the

subsequent analysis to report on clear signs that social activism is more than just an espoused value

of the millennial cohort. When my team was given the opportunity to get involved, most of them did

and their sentiments around both the work done and their alignment to the company was positive.

The analysis done also augments the existing literature and provides evidence that shows clear

support for social activism as an engagement practice. Just to recap and clarify this point, while there

are sources that do the following:

(a) state that taking the social concerns of millennials into account is important for managers to do,

(b) provide evidence of companies that allow staff to participate and take time to get involved in

various causes, and

(c) mention how strongly millennials feel about company values;

none of the identified literature has made a case for company-sponsored social activism, nor have any

of the sources spoken specifically about looking at social activism as an HR practice that complements

the intrinsic drivers of staff engagement and aligns the value-set of the individual with the

organisation. These finding have allowed me to develop a descriptive theory upon which I am able to

act. In the next chapter, I reflect on my research process and conclude the study, tying it back to my

research objectives before suggesting areas for further research.

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Chapter 6: Reflections and Conclusion

6.1: Introduction

This final chapter provides the conclusion to my study where I will also reflect on my personal journey

with this topic and provide some suggestions in terms of further research. It commences with an

evaluation of the research that I have done as it pertains to my research objectives closing on a more

personal narrative.

6.2: Research implications and next steps

6.2.1: Research goals and commentary

In order to provide a comprehensive account on whether my research has enabled me to achieve the

goals that I set at the beginning, I have captured my evaluation in the table below.

Table 7: Research evaluation

Goal To what extent was it achieved?

Pra

ctic

al

Determine if there is clarity among the millennials around the Shared Growth strategy and what it means to them practically; would they get involved?

In doing the research on the Kreeate project, I used the opportunity to test knowledge on Shared Growth with the team. It was clear that the knowledge levels were low as shared earlier – however, all of the millennials invited were eager to join.

Test the extent to which company-sponsored social activism actually creates greater alignment to, and engagement within my organisation.

Partially fulfilled. Although no engagement surveys were done, the feedback from staff showed that a positive correlation had been made between the company and the individual after having worked on the Kreeate project.

Benchmark key practices for incorporation into the company’s employee value proposition (and transferability to other situations) if praxis and engagement shifts successfully.

This was fulfilled through the research analysis and incorporated into the descriptive theory that was built.

Inte

llect

ua

l

Confirm whether the espoused societal values of millennial staff (as per the literature) match the reality of choices actually made.

The detailed literature review uncovered two separate paradigms regarding millennials – that of Generation Me and Generation We. My research findings point to the Generation We paradigm being the more accurate one within my own context, with millennial staff opting to get involved and is supported by the feedback received from staff as documented.

Provide insights around the extent to which social activism could actually enhance employee engagement, and how it could be incorporated into a more cohesive employee value proposition that addresses the needs of a millennial worker.

Partially fulfilled. The extent to which it could enhance engagement could not be measured due to the time frame of the study, however the incorporation in a manner that addresses the needs of a millennial are succinctly covered in the findings.

Pe

rso

nal

Gain a better understanding on how to motivate the millennial workforce and thereby improve loyalty, retention and alignment to the company, thus reducing the impact of employee attrition on my business.

The descriptive theory adequately fulfills this need and has been partially tested by the field research done.

Gain more insight into the phronetic choices that people make when confronted with doing “the right thing” in a societal context as part of their jobs, versus merely fulfilling the roles that they are contracted to do for a salary.

This has provided me with mixed results: (1) In the context of my own team, with Kreeate – it appeared

that the millennials opted to do the right thing – supporting the research in this regard as well

(2) In both my own team, and the first vignette exploring a multi-generational business concern – the (mostly) non-

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millennial players struggled to “do the right thing” due to competing commitments. This seems to indicate that phronetic ability depends on the user and does not come easily to the other generational cohorts.

6.2.2: Implications for further studies

During this study, I was able to successfully integrate both theoretical and practical perspectives that

provided preliminary evidence showing that company sponsored social activism had merit as an

engagement practice if certain salient points were taken into account. Using Integrative Thinking as a

conceptual model, I was able to cycle through Salience, Causality and Sequencing in order to build a

theoretical model describing the specific environment in which this would be true. This has resulted

in a CMO model that can now be used as a basis for the design of interventions to take this research

even further. This would also fulfil the Resolution leg of the Integrative Thinking model.

Possible avenues that I believe could be explored are:

1. The design of a business model that takes the Social Activism cycle as a standalone and defines a

company-specific strategy that works on each of the salient points and tests its success in

onboarding and retaining millennial staff, and possibly those from other generational cohorts as

well. The above study could also include a full engagement study across a large sample group –

which would close the loop on the research goals that I did not have sufficient time to evaluate.

2. The design of interventions that would improve the Fear and Control cycle in support of the Social

activism cycle. This would incorporate a leadership and team culture intervention with an aim to

get the team ready to embrace extrinsic motivators as well.

6.2.3: Relevance of the research

As set out in the first chapter, being able to both leverage better engagement of the workforce that is

now in the majority and simultaneously doing good in a world that is evermore in need of care, are

business imperatives. Companies are being judged, measured and supported based on their ability to

make a more positive impact on society and the environment, by regulators and consumers alike.

Millennials are not only our employees, they are also the face of a customer whose voice is growing

louder and more insistent out in the market; and understanding and aligning to their values makes

complete sense. The research concluded in this dissertation proves these points and the additional

theory that has been formulated goes some way toward describing how business leaders can better

achieve these goals. Ethically, and practically (so I guess, phronetically) it is the right thing to do.

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6.3: Personal reflections on this study

During the course of this research, I was faced with many personal challenges that often had me

wondering whether I would be able to get to this point at all. Although I have identified as a millennial

at the beginning of this study, I believe that I am more likely one of the individuals who form part of

an “in-between” cohort. Neither a Gen-Xer, nor a fully-fledged millennial. I guess that I have the traits

that the old guard seem to admire (if you trust my research). I’m dedicated, committed, have the work

ethic of a mule and I am as stubborn as one too. I would sooner keel over than not show up for work

due to illness or any other tragedy. I’m a company man. I’m someone who has been raised in the firm

belief that saying “Yes, sir!” was the only option. Yet these are not the traits that I admire in others. I

am inspired and energised by the new generation of employees in the workplace. Their courage to

speak out when they believe that things are wrong and their absolute insistence on being recognised

as people, are the two things that resonate with me the most. They are also quick to admit when they

are unable to do something. There is a transparency in how they do things that opens up new

doorways to authenticity for me.

However, the thing that really blows me away is that they care. They care deeply about others and

they are not afraid to show up wearing it like a badge. It is this care that motivated me to do this

research as my conscience was being awakened to the reality that the corporate world could no longer

operate in isolation of the ‘real’ world of people out there. That we had become a society of drones,

insensitive to the needs of everyone else but those closest to us. Yet this new group of young people,

glued to their phones and devices (I know, I know, so am I!) were showing the temerity to challenge

our unconscious states in terms of the humanness of connection.

So, I guess it is in honour of the younger team members who have helped me open my eyes to being

in the world, that I felt compelled to explore this topic. I felt that I had a story to tell in trying to

understand what doing the right thing meant, or could mean in the context of an organisation.

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6.4: Conclusion

I would like to conclude on that same note, by sharing the following quote from Dead Poet’s Society:

“We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry

because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with

passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and

necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we

stay alive for.”

“To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of

the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good

amid these, O me, O life?"

Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play

goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and

you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

- Robin Williams, as John Keating

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A L I G N I N G P U R P O S E T H R O U G H P R A C T I C E Page A-1

Figure 8: Shared Growth article from in-house magazine

Appendix A.

A.1: Shared Growth Article

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A.2: TBWA – The future of social activism (infographic)

Figure 9: The future of social activism. Infographic – image 1 of 3. Source: (TBWA, 2012)

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A.3: Kreeate – Prospectus and Links

Below is a copy of the Kreeate prospectus and links to their work, as provided by Alexander McLeod just after

our initial meeting in June 2017.

Kreeate Digital (Pty) Ltd Company Registration Number: 2016/407081/07

Executive Directors: Alexander John McLeod, Robin John Peterson

Kreeate – An Entrepreneurship Movement Introduction Kreeate (pronounced “create”) is a high school focused initiative that looks to advocate and foster entrepreneurship among learners aged 13 – 19 years. We have worked with learners across all LSM’s and have seen the drive to want to succeed in all of them. Excitement and enthusiasm about making your own money is clearly evident, irrespective of where the learners come from. Click HERE to watch the video of 2015 School Entrepreneurship Programme Graduation Ceremony. After five years of successfully implementing a host of extra-curricular school entrepreneurship activities, Kreeate has launched the first of its digital engagement platforms, a digital game. The game is available for both Android and Windows devices and can be played offline i.e.: no permanent internet connection is required. Kreeate has the full support of the National Department of Basic Education. We have signed a Memorandum of Agreement (“MOA”) with the Department that affords us access to all Basic Education Department structures to promote and implement the Kreeate platforms. Kreeate Digital Game – A Brief Overview The basic premise of the game is to earn as many coins as you can so that you feature among the top ranked players on the leaderboard. Coins can be earned in two ways: 1. Game Play which involves buying and selling products applicable to three industries namely retail,

technology, automotive and also buying assets that generate passive income (coins) in two additional industries namely property and sport & entertainment. There is also a “red tape” and financial management element to the game play component.

2. Utilising Educational Tools where the player (the learner) completes in-game curriculum aligned multiple-choice quizzes for the school subjects, currently Economic and Managements Sciences (“EMS”) and Business Studies. Answering quiz questions correctly earns you coins

There is also a reporting function to our Educational Tool component of the game. This reporting function serves as a Learner Management System (“LMS”) in that it will record all of a learner’s quiz results and make these results available to an educator. Educators would need to register on the Kreeate Game website in order have access to the LMS for their learners. Education Department officials can also be allocated “super user” rights in that they will be able to view results for all learners from schools in relevant Education Districts of their Province. This function is also applicable to National Department officials who wish to access Provincial results. A key feature of the LMS is generating of “red flag” reports. These “red flag” reports will highlight which quiz questions are being answered incorrectly by more than half the learners in a Class/Grade/Education District/Province.

The quizzes and LMS are powerful tools for “continuous” assessment. We launched Version 1 (“V1”) of our game on 18 July 2016. We were and still are very encouraged at the response the game received from high school learners. Some statistics from the V1 launch and competition include: 1. 593 downloads 2. 9480 hours of game play between 18 July and 30 September. This equates to approximately 16 minutes

of game play per day per player 3. EMS and Business Studies quizzes taken a combined 32 900 times between 1 August and 30

September 2016. EMS quiz taken 26 328 times, Business Studies quiz taken 6572 times. This works out to approximately one quiz per day per player.

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At no point during the above-mentioned period that V1 was “out there” did we force any learner or educator to engage with the game. What we did do though was to incentivize engagement with the game. In line with this, we ran a competition where a weekly cash prize for the most coins earned was awarded to one learner. Following on from the success of the 2016 pilot, we have now built and launched V2 of our Kreeate Game. In February 2017 we presented to schools across the Metropole North, Central and South Education Districts of the Western Cape – these presentations were during the Annual Planning Workshops for EMS and Business Studies and given to educators for these two subjects. From these sessions, 153 high schools have requested Kreeate Game activations for their learners. The Western Cape Education Department has seen the value in our platform and in turn has invited us to present to an additional 200 schools, from all eight Education Districts of the Western Cape. These presentations will be given in July 2017. In partnership with the Kagiso Shanduka Trust, we have launched our game in the Free State Province and rolled it out to 19 high schools spread across the Fezile Dabi and Motheo Education Districts. Our goal is to have a national footprint by the end of 2019 and for our platform to the platform of choice for learners and educators.

In Closing We believe we are in a unique position to make a valuable contribution to entrepreneurship advocacy and digital education in high schools across South Africa. This is the ideal age range to engage with this audience about their future socioeconomic prospects in order to prepare them for life after Grade 12. Your organization can be part of it. Thank you Alexander McLeod Executive Director Kreeate Digital (Pty) Ltd

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