MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

maintenance and improvement of the democratic system and for
the relations between elected and appointed officials.
3. It makes a contribution to the literature on stakeholder management
and, in particular, to an issue concerning whether and, if so, why
this is a type of management practised by trade union managers in
a polyarchy. There are many theories of stakeholder management
but, particularly in literature with ethical dimensions, there is an
emphasis on normative theories (e.g. Donaldson and Preston
1995). One might expect that those who have achieved high office
in trade unions would have certain principles, for example of
fairness and equality, which might be discernible in the way they
manage. So the issues of whether it is, why it is and whether
stakeholder management is recognisable is novel in a literature
which, in its theoretical form, is often more concerned with defining
new theories of the firm rather than examining the practice of
stakeholder management, and its theoretical implications, in other
contexts.
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