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MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

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‘Legitimate’ managerial actions - stakeholders<br />

you have a good relationship with your Chair and Vice Chair and<br />

I also think it's crucial that you have a business plan so that<br />

everything that you do is crystal clear to the Chair, the Vice<br />

Chair and the Executive itself -- that there is a work programme,<br />

that there are costings beside that. There should be no hidden<br />

agendas whatsoever. So your relationship needs to be on the<br />

basis of trust and confidence in one another. I think that that is<br />

paramount. If you haven't got that, then I think that you are in<br />

trouble. (Interviewee D)<br />

I think it's important that you do have a caring and<br />

understanding for one another because their time that they give<br />

you is precious. You know, they actually have to work and so<br />

you need to keep a keen interest in their health and their welfare<br />

as well. So that of primary importance. I also think it's important<br />

that you have a relationship with each member of the Service<br />

Group Executive and that is a business relationship but it's also<br />

a caring one. (Interviewee D)<br />

Relationships are described by another manager in terms of the<br />

importance of the lay member with whom he is relating:-<br />

I would say, and be honest, if I get a phone call saying can you<br />

ring D.A. (then Vice-President), I'm going to ring (him). Not<br />

because he is an NEC member but because he is an important<br />

player. That doesn't mean if I had a call from someone else, I<br />

wouldn't call them but to a certain extent you do think about the<br />

importance. And you do get NEC members try to short circuit<br />

and I generally will try and not do that because I don't think it is<br />

right. (Interviewee B)<br />

A senior manager reflects on how management of the strategic goals of<br />

the union can be done in such a way that lay activists change their<br />

behaviour:-<br />

We work to the lay membership. But we are bringing in a new<br />

dimension, a different dimension, and one of the things that we<br />

haven't sorted out yet is if we are going down certain tracks as<br />

far as the union is concerned with the full time officers, whether<br />

or not we are taking the lay membership with us. If we are<br />

saying that more of our resources are devoted to doing things<br />

rather than sitting in committees and yet we have still got a<br />

group of lay activists who want to sit in committees and we can't<br />

get them to move over to an organising type of culture.<br />

(Interviewee C)<br />

A regional manager articulates a particular problem for her in<br />

stakeholder management where the issues involved are political ones:-<br />

328

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