MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Managing by information
finalised yet. So we're getting there I like to think a lot quicker
since I have become General Secretary because of a number of
initiatives. Some little things have happened to bring unity. We
used to have two Education Officers, one was ex NCU and one
was ex UCW. We now have got one Head of Education and
Training -- we have just recently appointed L who joined us from
Bectu -- and she is looking to integrate all the education to make
it much more unified. So we are working on it. It has been
painful, as all mergers are and you still get people talking about -
- and I have tried to banish the terms even though I have just
used them myself -- ex UCW and ex NCU -- because we will be
eight years merged in January. It's a long time. Kids talk, walk
and go to school in that period and we have not yet learned to
talk about one union. (Interviewee B)
Managerial tasks
Managing by information
5.12. There is very little evidence that the CWU managers adopted any form
of strategic approach to their communication role and some evidence
to the contrary:-
One of the problems here is that staff and officers have an
expectation that if there is an issue, it will be dealt with against
transparent theories and criteria and there will be consistency of
decision making. And the Borgia court would have been more
transparent. (Interviewee G)
This is corroborated by the Equality and Diversity report:-
The pattern of management seemed to vary widely with, for
example, some managers having regular team meetings and
supervision systems with discussion and consultation taking
place, and other teams meeting very occasionally and with very
restricted agendas. Methods of communication also seemed to
vary greatly, with some managers attempting to "cascade down"
what was happening in the organisation and at the NEC levels,
but with others communicating very little in any consistent way.
There were also strong views expressed by staff about the
different styles of individual managers and the inconsistency
with which different issues and problems were dealt with and
resolved between different managers. Overall, and this was
confirmed by discussions with some senior staff, the different
departments in the organisation could be seen to be
autonomous in the way that they functioned in that they tend to
work "individually" with a particular departmental style. There
appeared in general to be no particular corporate approach,
style or even message that was developed across in the
organisation in its day-to-day management. This does not mean
that the CWU does not have strong messages and clear
leadership from the top of the union. Rather, the issue is how the
organisation communicates with staff in a consistent and regular
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