MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Deploying resources
union principles’. In that there is some evidence of a general belief in
‘fairness’, these have potential relevance to resource allocation
activities.
From a strictly financial point of view, one manager makes a strong
statement on the subject:-
That is one of the reasons why in spite of one of two people
wanting it, we have stood out and won on per capita budgeting.
I know how much would come in from each of them but that's
not generally available for the very specific reason, that the
small people obviously are costing us money and there would be
attempts to marginalise them. So I hope it never does. It's one
for all and all for one (Interviewee K)
Practitioners on the ground make similar points:-
In terms of the number of members and in terms of subscription
income, you could not operate a system where that has to be
self balancing. So certainly, the resources are disproportionate
in various ways. But you have to service those members. They
are going to become a Unifi member, you can't discriminate
against them and say, well, look, the service for you will not be
quite as good as those people elsewhere because of whatever.
I believe that wherever they are, whoever they may be, whatever
their problems are, you have to service the membership in a
consistent and a fair way. Collectively and individually. You
talked about fairness. That is something else which may not be
part of your brief but it is so close to my heart. (Interviewee M)
Sometimes you had to lay those trade union principles on the
table and say, look, they are as deserving of the resources as
anybody else. Yes, pound for pound it is going to cost you more
to service them than somebody who works in the Branch retail
network. But the new union has a far greater understanding of
that. (Interviewee H)
A similar view is expressed by a functional manager at headquarters
who also indicates the complexity of making decisions on priorities and
how she would seek to approach this:-
Trying to say what has priority in that area is very complicated.
There are clearly some easier values issues but they are all very
rule of thumb. Generally the things that affect a greater number
of people rather than a lesser number of people -- having said
that we would certainly not say that Nat West has got more
members than this building society, therefore their work takes
priority. So it only works so far and there probably are a number
of rules or guidelines that you have in your head as to how to
balance them. You kind of work it out over time. Again, it
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