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MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

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Moral rules and trade union principles<br />

fairness and democracy and you can always see the other side<br />

of the argument. (Interviewee J)<br />

One manager believed, as did interviewee J, that fairness should go<br />

hand in hand with firmness:-<br />

They want fairness and the equity but they also want the<br />

compassion and the hardness. (Interviewee E)<br />

There are related values such as openness:-<br />

We are the first people to complain about lack of consultation<br />

and abuse of process so I think in that sense, that is the way we<br />

would want to do things, involve people and talk to them.<br />

(Interviewee L)<br />

Also inclusion and control over one’s environment:-<br />

Our values as a trade union are all about people in the<br />

workplace being included in decision-making, having a say over<br />

their working lives and I think as a manager of staff, you know,<br />

looking at the staff side of the job, we ought to apply those<br />

values to our own staff. (Interviewee O)<br />

The same manager referred also to the protection of minorities:-<br />

An integral part of our values is to look at the interests of groups<br />

who are excluded by not being part of the majority (Interviewee<br />

O)<br />

At very senior level, values were linked very much to the organisation’s<br />

people:-<br />

Personal belief about how the organisation should be<br />

managed…. I actually believe I understand how our key people<br />

work and what they are feeling and how they react to things…It<br />

is value driven; that's how I think the organisation should be run.<br />

(Interviewee C)<br />

Amongst UNISON managers one can thus discern fairness, equality<br />

and justice as values impacting on their managerial roles, as well as<br />

related values such as openness, inclusion and involvement. An<br />

assertion that moral rules of this kind are significant is supported by the<br />

managerial objectives cited above which talk (inter alia) of good<br />

management practice, lack of discrimination and achieving staff<br />

potential. We look now at managerial approaches to representative<br />

rationality.<br />

One particular observation is an outlier in terms of the values it seems<br />

to signify:-<br />

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