MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Trade union managers
And another manager has been conscious of his approach to
management changing with experience and learning:-
I think my approach to management has changed. M
characterises it that you have to think like a manager, not like an
employee and it is something that I think I do automatically now.
I also remind other people to do it as well. National managers, I
would occasionally say that you have to think like a manager not
like an employee and that demands a very different sort of
thinking and sometimes, often, it requires thinking about the
impact of your decisions on other people and the fact that you
are consuming resources in area that are less important than
other parts of the organisation (Interviewee H)
There appears to be little disagreement that anyone in UNISON with
any form of managerial responsibilities will see themselves as
managers:-
Anyone who has a management responsibility would see
themselves as a manager in Unison. (Interviewee B)
A view that at national level is shared but about which there may be
some confusion:-
There is a whole group of people who are basically Senior
National Officers in the Service Groups, for example, who are
called managers’ and go along to managers meetings but don't
mostly really have a management function, because they are
senior officers. So I think their experience is very different and I
think they would say -- some of them I think are quite keen to try
and develop an actual sense of themselves as managers and a
management role but have the classic problem that they are
actually expected to do a Senior National Officer's job most of
the time if not all of the time and therefore finding it very difficult
to make time for management, really. (Interviewee G)
At regional level it has been, perhaps, more of a struggle:-
Yes they do.(see themselves as managers) They do now. I
mean, it's been a struggle and it's taken some time and some
see themselves as managers more than others but, yes they do.
They do. (Interviewee O)
Which is perhaps continuing in some places:-
I think the trouble is that has not percolated down below the
level of Regional Secretary within Unison and that is one of the
big problems we have about managing generally. (Interviewee
K)
279