MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Merger management
However, individual managers found ways themselves to manage the
situations in which they found themselves. One had to manage a
personal situation in working relationships:-
Early on there was a little friction with somebody who was in
post in one of the other unions who had aspirations of the senior
job. So that has been managed reasonably carefully. We
thought we had come to a compromise but in the end we found
that it wasn't working and she decided to up and leave anyway.
That was one of the difficult areas because it was having an
effect on the rest of the people as well. I was quite willing to
compromise in terms of what we did, the roles and
responsibilities that we had. It worked for a while but I think it
was the nature of the person rather than the roles themselves
that caused the problem. Apart from that, it's fine. We are
becoming more business orientated every day, I think, which is
what we need to do. (Interviewee D)
Another sought to bring staff together across sites:-
I had a couple of team meetings. The problem was that on the
two sites, this one ran all right but on the two sites, if I actually
took the whole team out of a site, there was a danger they would
have no computers because the maintenance level that was
required was so high that you couldn't afford to take all your staff
away. Therefore you couldn't have a meeting of all your staff.
Now we did have a meeting of all the staff. We had two. Last
week I had another because we have now effectively wound
down completely the one computer, the old computer at Raynes
Park so I was able to take the 5 staff at Raynes Park to meet the
three staff at Haywards Heath. (Interviewee B)
I have a really strong belief that you do have to get people
together, to get them to work together. I mean, I would have
loved to have run some time management sessions with them. I
would have loved to have run some project sessions with them.
Those are the sort of things I'd like to do that we will do but at
the moment, you can't take people away if all of a sudden 30
people stop work. (Interviewee B)
In one department, the manager found the process exciting:-
That was quite a challenge but it was exciting too. It was a new
union and a new research Department. (Interviewee J)
She described some of her tasks:-
We discussed with the General Secretary as part of the
interview process how the research Department would fit in. We
were then asked to come up with plans on how that would
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