MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

‘Legitimate’ managerial actions - stakeholders
Another is that maturity has been gained in working out the
relationship:-
The discussions in Unison in terms of democracy guidelines and
how you change policy is a debate that we have been having
over the years and I think we are mature enough now to
understand that relationship, that you can change policy in the
appropriate fashion. Equally, I am in a position, in engaging with
the regional lay people, to in fact be able to argue politically for a
change in national policy. And that is back to the partnership. I
mean, it is not just left to lay dimensions regionally and
nationally to do that. (Interviewee M)
And another believes that introducing work programmes has served to
define boundaries in the very way they operate:-
We have developed a work programme. We didn't have work
programmes in the past. There weren't any. So in a sense this
has been a major step forward and that is kind of an example of
what we have to do as officers for the lay committee and we
hold ourselves accountable to them. So that is a clear
boundary. We do those work objectives; they then have a say
about them but we put them together. (Interviewee D)
Managers, then, manage boundaries, some with clarity, some with
ease, some with competitiveness. The word’ negotiation’ has been
used several times in connection with the ways used to engage in
these managerial activities and, of course, one would regard
negotiations as a core skill of a trade unionist. In UNISON, managers
frequently talk of bringing people together to arrive at a solution where
stakeholders are in conflict or boundaries need to be managed:-
Bringing people in. Not excluding one of the interests -- bringing
them in and trying to sort it out. And usually you can sort it out.
But again, the issue is time and it is the will to do it. At the end
of the day, if there is a clear difference, they have got to accept
that you will take a decision and hopefully you will take the right
decision. (Interviewee C)
I guess what I do is, normally I will bring people together to do
that. That's the way that we tend to work inside Unison. We
identify a problem or an issue, we identify a range of interested
stakeholders or interested individuals -- you know, is it an issue
for officers, is it an issue for lay members, is it an issue for both,
is it an issue where we have got to get officers together first and
then get lay members together and you either deal with it
through a series of individual consultations or you deal with it by
bringing people together around the table in a much more
structured way. (Interviewee H)
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