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MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

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Merger management<br />

had time to do that when we brought people together.<br />

(Interviewee N)<br />

The one thing, though, that I think we didn't really discuss at the<br />

level that I was engaged was the management process of the<br />

new union. Now I am certain that there wasn't sufficient<br />

dialogue around that at national level because had there been<br />

we would have been more engaged or at least aware of it.<br />

(Interviewee M)<br />

Although another manager had a slightly different perspective on one<br />

aspect of management process:-<br />

Well there was a lot of discussion around structure, as usual, as<br />

Unison always seemed to be obsessed with structure so there<br />

was an awful lot of discussion about structure and levels<br />

(Interviewee G)<br />

Another structural reflection related to the idea of regional management<br />

teams:-<br />

That made it very difficult to manage when you create a<br />

management team from people from each of those three<br />

cultures. Even the very sense of management team is different,<br />

Mike, because if you recall I never operated a management<br />

team in NALGO. I, if you like, was a manager and other people<br />

had different jobs to do. The term "management team" was<br />

something that was really quite new. And we were told to have<br />

a management team. What was that and what was that about?<br />

And I am not sure that we were terribly well fitted to do that in<br />

the early stage (Interviewee K)<br />

Managers from the Health Group reflected that their experience was<br />

different from others:-<br />

It was a collective and it was very, very important in those first<br />

couple of years that that was conveyed to the staff. You know,<br />

saying to the staff at this was a genuine partnership, this wasn't<br />

a takeover, that we were trying to build something in health that<br />

was a new union not, you know, the practices and culture of one<br />

other partner unions would not dominate. (Interviewee H)<br />

The coming together of the Health Group was fun, it was great, it<br />

was extraordinary and in a sense every single one of us felt that<br />

we were Unison, that we represented everything that was good<br />

about Unison and we felt that we were at the cutting edge and<br />

leading Unison -- but we lost our way. (Interviewee D)<br />

There are scars on my back, actually, because I think that the<br />

Health Group did it too well too quickly and as a consequence a<br />

311

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