MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Moral rules and trade union principles
anyway. I think half of them have got a chip on their shoulder
and I think the reason they have got a chip on their shoulder in
many cases, should I say this, because they have probably not
been very successful doing what they have done. Where they
have worked. And they have found one way of becoming a
bigger fish in a pond is to get involved in the trade union. That is
not the case with everybody, it is definitely not the case with
everybody, but when you look at committees and see what
happens all the time and I just felt that they were losing sight of
the big objective, passing around with some pedantic things that
were just daft. And hidden agendas were just unbelievable.
(Interviewee B)
Issues of representative rationality and boundary management will be
explored later. Cognitively, some managers perceive that the lay
structure impedes their managerial roles, slows down decision making
and makes managerial activities more problematic. This is by no
means a generalised view. It has, however, been possible to identify a
range of cultural and experiential perceptions which cognitively impact
on managers in UNiFI and can be expected to influence their
managerial behaviours.
Systems related to moral rules
7.9. Here it is intended to examine whether there are sets of values or
principles which influence the way that managers manage in UNiFI. In
one case, commencing a discussion on this issue provoked a singular
response:-
My view is that if you want to be a priest or a nun, fuck off to a
nunnery. If you want to be a social worker, train to be one. If
you're going to be one, be a good one. Don't work in the trade
union movement. It's not a calling - we have people that seem to
think it's like an alternative to the church. I'm in the trade union
movement - they waft it about their middle class dinner parties
sometimes- she works in the trade union movement, he works in
the trade union movement, look at him, what do they do. It's not
a calling. It's a business arrangement. We exist because
businesses exist. We are economic organisations. If you want to
be a politician, join a political party. (Interviewee A)
This response, though eminently quotable, was not typical of the
expressed views of managers in UNiFI. As did some managers in the
CWU, one expressed the value of fairness, but not on its own:-
I've always adopted the view that I expect managers to be hard,
I expect them to be fair. (Interviewee O)
Another explicitly linked his values as a trade unionist with his
approach to people:-
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