MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

managers approached their relations with their organisation’s
stakeholders in ways which reflected their trade union principles.
Whether articulated or not, normative stakeholder theory, insofar as it is
possible to define it, is a relevant concept.
This discussion has been a lengthy one because of the potential links
of stakeholder theories of governance to polyarchal theories of trade
union organisation. The latter, however, are usually based on
pessimistic notions of governance, positing a situation where interest
groups are in conflict, whereas many contributions in discussions of
stakeholder theory focus on the positive rights of stakeholders and the
need for management to attend to them.
Stakeholder theory is not the only theory of governance which could be
relevant here. Cornforth (2002) examines the governance of public and
non-profit organisations, an area which he says in under-theorised. He
proposes a paradox perspective as a conceptual framework to bring
together a number of different theoretical perspectives in a consistent
manner and explain their domains of application. He uses the language
of ‘owners’ and ‘boards’ but it is easy to adapt this to enlighten a
discussion of the relative roles of, particularly, activists in unions and
trade union managers who interact with them. Exhibit 2.1, adapted from
Cornforth’s article, seeks to do this.
The ideas here are of considerable interest. The case studies will
reveal a variety of relationships between managers and activists. The
partnership model – seen in this study as midway between the
conception of membership participation and leadership predominance
(Fairbrother 2000) – is clearly recognisable. The democratic model may
perhaps be related to the membership predominance perspective and
the ‘rubber stamp’ model to that of leadership predominance. Cornforth
(2002) describes the role of the (Executive Council) under agency
theory, and also under resource dependency theory, as ‘boundary
spanning’, and we shall see that boundary management is a key issue
in the relationships between activists and managers. This is something
which has been addressed in literature relating to different types of
organisations; network organisations (Hirschorn and Gilmore 1992),
public sector organisations (Baddeley and Payne 1997; Peters 1998)
and the non-profit sector (Kramer 1985, Leat 1988, Harris 1991). Whilst
these represent different historical and/or practical contexts, such work
may be of interest in examining the dynamics of these relationships.
So although the propositions below focus on stakeholder theories, it
may be that other theories of governance will assist in explaining how
activists and managers relate. One does not have to abandon
stakeholding language in this exercise. Cornforth specifically looks at
the interests of different stakeholders so the application of his ideas
remains consistent with the notion of interest groups pursuing
legitimate goals within a trade union, seen as a polyarchy, and of trade
union managers seeking to manage within such a framework.
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