MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Deploying resources
staff clearly, in fact wanted to have improved social and
domestic facilities at their doorstep, unlike Sherwood Rise.
Sherwood Rise was the old NUPE building; Castle Gate was the
old NALGO building and there was always the sense of have
and have nots in the context of that sort of relationship anyway.
(Interviewee M)
Somewhat surprisingly, however, in a union where managers use the
discourse of culture in discussion of their managerial activities (a
search revealed 47 coded passages of text from 13 managers),
practical considerations of people being separate tended to dominate
the observations of national managers:-
Well, it almost goes without saying that until we were all in the
same building, more or less, or at least within the same location
(because we still have Welfare in the NUT), until you did that it
was incredibly difficult to build one organisation. (Interviewee B)
Initially it did not have an impact on me greatly because I was
dealing with Local Government and that was based here and it
made life slightly more difficult trying to get in touch with
Communications, or something but it was liveable with but when
I became the AGS after the functional review was implemented,
being responsible as a manager for dealing with people in
Woolwich, I was quite conscious of the fact that there was a sort
of them and us view with most of the NALGO people who
worked here and went down to Woolwich were pissed off and
angry with the organisation. (Interviewee E)
Well, it did have a huge impact, there is no doubt about that. I
mean, the fact that Communications were at Woolwich and
Education and other parts of the organisation. I mean,
Communications was probably the biggest problem. Not being
able to walk upstairs or downstairs to engage in an informal way
with that expertise…There is no doubt that even with the advent
of technology, it was a major problem (Interviewee H)
At regional level, however, language was slightly different:-
There was unfinished business in that we had the Stafford sub
office which was left there and that, right up to last year when it
was closed (because that was one of my objectives, to close it) it
was still like a former NUPE sub office, you know eight years
after the merger….One of the motivating factors in terms of
closing the office (was) this horrible sub office culture that had
developed up there which I didn't like (Interviewee O)
Having said all of that, we still, in fact, found that for whatever
reason there was a massive problem about attitudes in relation
to the Sherwood Rise end of things. So that was a cultural thing
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