MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

‘Legitimate’ managerial actions - stakeholders
then the next executive meeting says, well that was a silly
decision and we insist that there is not only paper but it is blue
and it is very expensive, that decision, even though it is not
theirs to take, they could take (Interviewee D)
Similarly with Conference:-
If D stands up in front of conference and says this decision for a
new tier in the organisation is going to cost £2 million, we have
not got it and it will bankrupt the union - in a business, that view
would never get challenged. In our organisation conference can
say that we want to spend that £2 million and your job then is to
try and recover it from somewhere else. (Interviewee D)
The consequence of which is that:-
I used to love going to conference but I'm afraid I hate it now
(Interviewee D).
Perhaps this is a symptom of institutional conflict:-
I think the generality is respect for the General Secretary’s
position. There is a lot of natural support but you have a
constant battle within officer groups and within the executive
council (Interviewee D)
And it is certainly the case, as we saw in the story about substitution for
officers discussed above, that boundaries are contested:-
Sometimes there is a desire of the executive to actually try and
run the administration of the organisation or to interfere with it in
ways that are not always helpful. If you are managing a
company you are managing a command structure; we have this
democratic structure. At the end of the day if they don't like what
you're doing they can actually act as the last Court of Appeal. It
is a constraint and we have a very big executive -- it's like a mini
conference -- and I don't think it's helpful. (Interviewee O)
Boundaries relating to staff, in fact, are the ones which are most
frequently mentioned:-
Ideally the executive would have no bloody role at all on people
issues and the administration of the union. They may have a
corporate governance issue with relation to finance but to
anybody who has a contract of employment with the union then
it comes to how you manage those people. I would not involve
the executive at all. It's a delegated function totally through the
managers. That would be the first thing (Interviewee G)
The new General Secretary, accepting that boundary management is
important, has wasted no time in seeking to define the boundaries:-
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