MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Merger management
not ex NCU people but they have come in and gone straight into
the ex NCU culture because we haven't merged the Organising
and Recruitment department to have one CWU recruitment
culture, if you see what I mean.. (Interviewee N)
One manager found it possible to identify the culture which had
become dominant:-
I have constantly referred to the fact that you have two cultures
in this organisation. Another demonstration of that is that, at
least until now, on the telecoms side most of the officials have
been appointed by the executive, subject to confirmation by
conference. On the postal side everybody is elected for a fiveyear
term. It looks as if the postal culture is now dominant and,
from now onwards, the CWU will elect officers (Interviewee L)
This research took place amongst managers many of whom, as can be
seen, confirmed the lack of a corporate approach to managing change
arising from the merger and testified to the consequences of this. This
is corroborated by the Equality and Diversity report, presented following
a survey of staff:-
It is emphasised that we are aware that mergers and
amalgamations are difficult and it can take a long time before a
new organisation settles down and begins to develop a
corporate culture of its own. However, the CWU does still seem,
some years after its merger, a long way from becoming one
organisation in the minds of many of its staff, (rather than two
organisations who happen to share the same building). There
were, naturally, other more positive views expressed by staff
regarding elements of the previous organisations combined in
the CWU, along with the many opportunities and advantages
that now presented themselves as a result of the merger. The
challenge for the CWU is to build on and develop these positive
perspectives and promote the benefits of the changes that have
been made which are currently undermining the organisation.
Indeed the CWU may want to develop a strategy that involves all
staff more pro-actively in the new directions being taken by the
union and the changes that are being made. (Delivering on
Equality, 2000)
The new senior managers, however, are committed to making
structural changes which will go some way to cementing the merger:-
So at the moment we are just in the process of looking again at
our structure. We have just had a number of studies -- we have
had an Equality and Diversity report, we have had an analysis of
membership views by North London University, we have had a
financial performance analysis which T has done and we have
had a report done by Keith Ewing of Kings College, together with
Linda Kelly which I have just got the first draft, it hasn't been
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