MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

‘Legitimate’ managerial actions - stakeholders
Legitimate’ Managerial Actions
7.16. We saw earlier that relationships with the democratic structure had
changed for almost every manager in UNiFI because of the merger and
the different types of relationships that existed in the old unions. It also
seemed clear that managers had, in general, a positive attitude
towards representative rationality. Here, therefore, we look at how
those relationships are managed – how stakeholder management, in
this respect, is practised.
In one case, this is done in a way that seems untypical:-
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. Everything was
slowed down in particular by one individual who wasn't in this
case a lay person, he was actually in this case a full-time
employee of one of the organisations. But because that person
was trying to feather his own nest and get his own things sorted
out, he was able to block this, block that and block everything
else. And I just thought, well, he needed a good kicking.
(Interviewee M)
The idea that the structures can produce unrepresentative results is not
one that was commonly expressed by managers in UNiFI. Referring to
one of the old unions, however, there was one expression of it:-
When I went to the NWSA and said that we should merge with
Unifi and BIFU, I think the vote was 72 against and one in
favour. I was slaughtered, absolutely slaughtered. We did a poll
of our seconded reps and jointly accredited reps and the answer
was that no way should we merge. We did a survey by the
Institute of Manpower Studies and it came back that the
members wanted it. And that confirms to me that the some
extent the activists have got have a vested interest in keeping it
the way it is and are not truly representative of the rank-and-file
members. So we have got to have a technique to make sure
that the reps are more representative of the members or for the
members to get more involved in telling the reps what they want.
If we had listened to our reps, we would not have merged.
(Interviewee N)
The same interviewee is of the view that working relationships with the
lay structure have tensions in them that perhaps would also have
existed in the sort of situation described above:-
One of the issues that I have found with the Executive, and I
have not been on one myself, is that there is an innate distrust of
full time officers. If you're on an executive or you are on a
committee of any type you never think you get all the
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