MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

considerable cultural differences between the two organisations.
COHSE was a much smaller union which had been seeking to develop
a team ethos in the way it worked. It was particularly concerned not to
be submerged by the two bigger unions and therefore, as a single
industry union, sought a leading role in a strong Health service group.
The General Secretary of NUPE, Rodney Bickerstaffe, was by far the
best known of the three, the others being Alan Jinkinson (NALGO) and
Hector MacKenzie (COHSE). Negotiations, however, were long and
involved and lay members from all three unions were involved to a
greater or lesser extent. It was always expected that NALGO members
would be the most resistant to merger (as it proved in the ballot) and so
it could be argued that Alan Jinkinson had a principal role in getting out
the vote and handling some very difficult conferences; furthermore,
merger would not have been on the agenda of his predecessor.
However, unlike the other mergers, arguably the personality and
attitudes of the General Secretaries were not as much of a significant
factor in leading the process. Rules were agreed under which Alan
Jinkinson retired in 1996 and was replaced by Rodney Bickerstaffe.
Hector MacKenzie was Associate General Secretary until his
retirement in 2000.
UNISON is principally a public sector union but does have private
sector members as a result of privatisation and outsourcing.
In terms of merger management, UNISON made significant use of
trainers and training establishments (mainly Cranfield) in guiding the
process. Its managers accepted early on that the creation of a new
union was a 10 year enterprise – and so it has proved. Only after over
6 years were staff brought together at national level in a single Head
Office – that of former NALGO. The very substantial cultural differences
between the unions were addressed by the commissioning of an
anthropological study (Ouroussof 1993A and 1993B) which surfaced
the values and assumptions of organisational members and suggested
ways in which the new union could address them. This was probably a
unique step amongst unions and is very rare elsewhere.
Because of my previous employment at a senior level in UNISON until
January 2000, I did not commence researching in that Union until
August 2002.
1.4. METHOD AND CONTRIBUTION
A case study approach has been adopted. This has been for a
number of reasons. First, Yin (1994) suggests that case studies can
facilitate the answer to ‘how’ questions and the research question
falls into that category. Yin defines the case study as ‘an empirical
inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real
life context’ (page 13). Miles and Huberman (1994) define it as ‘a
phenomenon of some sort occurring within a bounded context’ (page
15