MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Cognitive rules and culture
A view which is emphatically supported by another senior manager:-
I think the biggest tension is the view held by a number of lay
officials, and senior full time officers as well, that managing is
not profitable time. To be worth, to be valued is delivering deals
and it’s even worse than that. It’s also profile. It’s going round
the country and that’s seen as being valued rather than
management. So the big tension is in that management as I
have described it is undervalued. It’s not undervalued in job
evaluation and pay terms because it is there but it is
undervalued in terms of what gives you a name and a reputation
within the union. It’s not valued (Interviewee H)
One manager offers some reasons as to why this situation, of
undervaluation of management, might have developed:-
It may have to do with whether full time officers are elected or
appointed, that may be a factor and also the history of
management practice in a union. As I said, we have developed
over the years into developing a management structure so we
are all far more conversant with that. Having said that, I would
say that the type of characters who are full time officers who are
by and large actors and prima donnas, that has a lot to do with
their resistance. And if full time officers are that sort of character,
they will stand up for themselves more, you know, and then
there is a whole kind of political dimension to that as well. Who
is giving this instruction? Is it someone whose politics you
respect? What is their motivation for the instruction or
whatever? So I do think that full time officers are far more likely
to challenge that kind of thing. (Interviewee N)
That particular manager, however, is of the view that things are
changing:-
We have just come later to it, really and with some resistance
and suspicions. For example, management training, whether
you need it at all or to the ideas like appraisal or team building
and that kind of thing. But, you know, attitudes are changing.
People are more accepting of the need. (Interviewee N)
Managers have different views on the extent to which the
undervaluation of management stems from the attitudes of full time
officers, often described as being themselves resistant to being
managed. :-
I think it is the case that people don't like to be managed, they
like autonomy and we're no different in that respect - but I
suppose the difference is that trade union structures may have
allowed for more autonomy than you would typically find in a
private sector organisation because of all the accountability and
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