MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Cognitive rules and culture
It is very simplistic to say, well I am a worker and that is the
employer and therefore we can never agree and I am the
workers' representative and I have to deal with the managers to
overcome problems, therefore I am not a manager. But
because there has not been a management culture in the union,
in terms of how they manage resources and deal with people, it
has been fairly ad hoc, people haven't made the leap to think,
well I am representing the workers on one hand but I am also
managing resources on the other. And I have always wanted,
when I did my trade union role, to deal with competent
managers because we want to deal with somebody who knows
what they are about and you can reach an agreement and you
know it will stick. And so if I am a trade union official and I want
that, I would expect the staff that I am responsible for in dealing
with their representatives on a day today basis to see me as a
competent manager (Interviewee E)
Some staff, notably field staff, may be having difficulties:-
Officers who negotiate and organise members spend most of
their time attacking managers. Most of their time is undermining
managers or challenging managers decisions. So I think it is the
point I made some time ago that to manage is a pejorative term,
it is almost a term of abuse. That has been tradition, I guess but
I think probably more significantly in the past most of these
people are outreach workers, they are on their own without
supervision with a patch that they are responsible for, they vary
in terms of their enthusiasm. Some are very committed and do
70 or 80 hours a week and find it's a bit rich for someone to
criticise their performance. I mean, it is difficult. If you work your
socks off and your performance is criticised, you take that very
personally. I mean, I would take that very personally.
(Interviewee H)
The General Secretary agreed that there had been resistance to
management, not because the management was necessarily bad but
because there wasn’t any. Staff, it was suggested, had in some cases
been ’sub-contractors’. In one region, resistance manifests itself in the
way staff accommodate to teamworking:-
There is kind of an individualistic culture, not just amongst ROs
but generally amongst staff that working in a team was seen as
being synonymous with being managed… I think it manifests
itself in some of the ways I was saying about those are the ones
who just can't bring themselves to say to their manager -- is it
OK if I have my leave next week? -- whether or not our terms
and conditions provide for that or not. So they would either say
nothing or say I am having leave next week. It makes some of
them quite confrontational, really, and not accept instructions.
(Interviewee O)
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