MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

‘Legitimate’ managerial actions - stakeholders
It says in the Regional Secretaries' job description is that she or
he is the representative of the General Secretary in the region --
you know, the three key points about the job, that is one of them.
I think there is an expectation that she will have a political role
but unlike the General Secretary, we are not elected by the
members. So it is, I think, hugely problematic. The scene is
shifting, really, and it is often what you can get away with in
terms of political influence in the sense of, what can we do about
the S. W. P.? But then, in other areas the union has clearly got
policies that have been agreed at National Delegate Conference
and so part of the political role is to work with the lay leadership,
the lay stakeholders, in a managerial sense to get those policies
implemented, actioned locally. But again, there are always
tensions around that because historically regions and branches
have seen themselves as having a degree of autonomy -- and
whether they are bound, you know (Interviewee O)
There are obviously constitutional implications in the issue described
here. UNISON managers have mixed views on the utility of the Rule
Book in the stakeholder management process. In terms of the Aims
and Objects, which in the UNISON Rule Book are rather more like a
purpose statement than a constitutional definition of powers, several
managers express an affinity:-
What I said to you is that I do what is in the interests of the
whole union. You know, who is to say what is in the interests of
the whole union? I have a particular view of what is in the
interests of the whole union, which of course I could say is
based on our aims and objects so I have some legitimacy in all
of that. You know, I could claim that I am just here to uphold the
rule book aims and objects and what I do follows on from that
but I wouldn't claim that a logical thought process. (Interviewee
J)
I thought that the rule book was a cultural document and
particularly the Aims and Objectives. It had things in the Unison
rule book, no matter how they were written -- how they were
written was often not particularly important -- but the fact that
they were in the rule book at all was important. They didn't
appear in the rule books of any other unions and that helped
define what we were about. Now that was a list of good
intentions that we had got to, some of them lowest common
denominator; they were a list of good intentions that we had got
to in the creation of the union -- they weren't necessarily part of
the union when we created Unison but nevertheless that was the
rule book and it was a cultural document and surely it was there
to help us try and define the culture and help us work out what
we were there for. There were times when you had to pay
attention to particular nuances here and there in the rule book,
some of which were intended and some of which weren't. By
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