MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Merger management
‘Meaningful Managerial Actions
Merger Management
8.13. UNISON was formed in 1993 which was longer before this research
than in respect of the other case study unions. Managers, therefore, did
not talk about the nuts and bolts of merger management, and there is
less data on this than is the case from managers in other unions. The
process is described from a managerial point of view in much more
detail in Dempsey and McKevitt (2001), based on the researcher’s
experience as participant observer. Issues relevant here include:-
• Cultural analysis
• Counselling available for staff in an employee assistance
programme
• Use of management development as a tool for facilitating
management of the merger process
• Management of change programmes for staff
• Cultural strategies to endeavour to demonstrate that none of the
organisations was the dominant partner
• Major voluntary redundancy programmes
One manager reflects on learning from his experience at the time:-
I do remember saying at the time that as far as I am concerned I
get a real buzz from this. I love the idea of change
management, thinking that you are trying to improve things and I
can't understand why people have got problems with it -- and a
person turned round and said that the difference between you
and me is that you are the instigator of change and I am the
victim of change. And it is something that has always stuck in
my mind -- that if you want proper change management and you
want improvement, you can't have victims of change
(Interviewee C)
Managerial reflections in hindsight do produce some interesting
features:-
If they worked at Woolwich, and worked for NUPE, and were
coming into a group of predominantly NALGO people to do the
same sort of function, functions were changing slightly, and in
hindsight what we probably did not do enough of was integrate
these people, take notice of the fact that you have got a member
of staff here who has worked with colleagues and those
colleagues have gone.. I don't think we paid enough attention at
the time to talk about where they were going to be and how it
was going to work. That is the integration of people together. It
is like meeting new friends for the first time, it takes a while to
build up a relationship. Perhaps as a manager it is certainly
something I would say to anyone else going through the same
exercise. Spend a bit of time to integrate. It could be social
events, it could be away days, whatever suits but I don't think we
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