MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Cognitive rules and culture
The same manager has a realistic view of the effect of management on
field officers’ work:-
I think it has.(reduced autonomy) It's not reduced the autonomy
in the sense that people can still manage their diaries. So if they
want to call in Sainsbury's on the way home at three o'clock they
still can and there's nothing wrong with that. I think that what
some people were worried about was that they would have to
account for every minute of their day but in terms of the
autonomy we have not really got this quite right and this is one
of the problems I mentioned earlier. (Interviewee O)
However, very few other managers perceive resistance to being
managed as a problem:-
I would say that if you take head office as a whole, it is very
much declining for people -- only to the extent that if you asked
me or any other manager at head office, we could name you the
20 people who fit into that category. We could all name the
same 20 people whether they were in our departments or not.
They are kind of the obvious suspects, the usual suspects and
there are some people who are, who believe themselves to be
free spirits, who came in to work for this great movement of ours
and will not be told how to do things (Interviewee J)
They may not use the word management but they certainly want
it, and they can see that to have an efficient organisation you've
got to be managed. (Interviewee B
We have had lots of resistance by members of staff accepting
that they had managers. That is beginning to change and as we
are getting newer people coming in, they accept it and they
actually relish it, you know. They do want somebody that they
can go to but the other side of that is that they have got to be
accountable for that. (Interviewee O)
One manager explains how this issue should in her view be
approached:-
I think there is a greater need to reassure that management is
actually a bonus, rather than a means of stabbing people in the
back, a difficulty to be overcome. (Interviewee F)
This constraint might, then be overcome. Other constraints are
perceived by managers in UNISON, often those related to personnel
practices, particularly related to discipline:-
Disciplinary sanctions nobody wants to get into, there is no
tradition, as you know. You tolerate all sorts of misdemeanours
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