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MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

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Performance management<br />

Constantly…She is doing a job of work in this Department but I<br />

need to understand what is being done and I need to question it<br />

because of the job it is (Interviewee N)<br />

The new General Secretary has some firm views about these issues:-<br />

I suppose the first difference is a thing that is easy to rebut but<br />

none the less it's often used -- oh, you're a trade union, therefore<br />

you should be a model employer. That's the first thing that gets<br />

thrown into your face but what the subtext of that is that we<br />

shouldn't have to be bossed about. My attitude to that is, this is<br />

a trade union, it's not a hippie commune. You can't just do what<br />

you want…… Now that is a bit difficult to manage. My only thing<br />

on that is that I don't see how you can do it other than by a<br />

strategic plan and I don't see how you can, and this is where<br />

there is real tension, do it without some kind of appraisal system.<br />

I just can't see how it can be done.<br />

And he believes that resistance to an objective based system,<br />

specifically here the Strategic Plan, is because people are<br />

uncomfortable with being held accountable:-<br />

I think the mistake that people make when you talk about a plan,<br />

if I say I'm getting out of that this morning and my intention is to<br />

run five miles and part of my run is blocked by roadworks and I<br />

run four and a half, your plan doesn't always go to plan but at<br />

least you had some idea of what you intended to do. And the<br />

main reason of course if you have a plan, people are<br />

accountable to that plan and are concerned about people<br />

saying, well what are you doing? -- I always think it's a bit like<br />

the description of work study. People say, oh my day's different<br />

every day -- every day my day's different. It's so different you<br />

wouldn't believe it. And when you analyse everybody's day,<br />

there is not that much difference. There is an amazing amount<br />

of commonality. So the main thing was, I don't want to have to<br />

have a plan because I'll be accountable and stuff like that.<br />

We have already seen that the meanings influencing managers in the<br />

CWU relate in part to their experiences of management and the<br />

consequent difficulty which they perceive in undertaking management<br />

roles, particularly those that involve making judgments about<br />

performance or conduct. This evidence is consistent with those<br />

observations. It is not clear which staff are being referred to in the<br />

above observation. The issue of staff having dual lines of accountability<br />

is more true in the CWU than in other case study unions because some<br />

managers are elected. It would not be surprising if they also enjoyed<br />

high levels of autonomy for that reason, though evidence for this did<br />

not surface. Either of these explanations would account for their<br />

resisting accountability within the management structure. But this would<br />

need to be researched further.<br />

112

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