MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

‘Legitimate’ managerial actions - stakeholders
organisation. Part of my managing is managing the lay
members and I have to be conscious of their political aspirations
and roles, where they are coming from, whether they are S. W.
P. or Socialist or Labour or Conservative. Because I am trying
to influence them at something. Now if I do influence them, if we
are having a debate about whether we should enter the
European monetary union, we can debate it but I don't think that
I have got any particular more skills in doing that than they have.
So it is a political judgment about what you believe in, if it is
good or bad for Britain. So I can marshal arguments and say,
well, from this research which has been done it would be better
to come in or stay out, or whatever, but I am one voice in it and
they might take a lead because of the status that I have in the
organisation. But then on the other side, as a manager, I am a
political animal because I have to work with these people in
order to achieve what I am trying to as a manager. And that's by
far the bulk of the time (Interviewee E)
Politics can, however, be seen as a factor with hard boundaries which
can only be harmoniously crossed in some specific circumstances:-
Politics will always win except in one circumstance and that is
where you are hitting the financial rocks. My experience is that
when you are running out of money and going to go bust (I know
that technically unions can't go bust but in practical terms)
people will then put politics on one side. We did a bit of that in
Unison when we had brought in a voluntary severance
programme two years or 18 months into the union. It certainly
happened in NUPE when we had run that six years of deficit and
we were faced, not with going bust, but with the difference
between a takeover and a merger and it wouldn't be a takeover
by NALGO, either, it would have been a takeover by the GMB
which, horror of horrors, we didn't want that. It quite
concentrated people's minds wonderfully and politics were put
on one side and I think if Unison was running a £5 million deficit
instead of a £5 million surplus a lot of the political game playing
would go on one side. (Interviewee A)
Some managers, however, do see the process of managing
boundaries as possible within an overall idea of partnership. One
reason is that lay members do not have the individual expertise to
cross boundaries.:-
In an odd sort of way, maybe that helps the sort of partnership
approach that I’m talking about. Today, lay members are sort of
happy to say “that’s our policy, off you go” because they
recognise that they do not necessarily have the skills to bring to
be managing of the type of organisation that we are. So maybe
that helps here in terms of that arrangement (Interviewee N)
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