MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Furthermore, the exhibit enables judgments to be made as to
the progress made by the four unions along the continuum of
phases of merger-
cwu
The evidence from the Equality and Diversity study, cited in Chapter 5,
suggested that staff felt that to some extent the union constituted two
unions sharing the same building rather than one merged organisation.
Staff told stories about their old organisations rather than their new one.
Management did little on any sort of corporate basis to address integration
issues other than, some years after formal merger and in ways that left
substantial parts of the union unintegrated, to move the union to a joint
head office.
The level of organisational stress revealed in this research suggests that
the union had progressed little from the formal merger stage of the
process. At the very least, the union appears to be at the early stage in the
'combination aftermath' stage where a 'we' versus 'them' mentality
remained.
PCS
The case study mentions in many places the conflict occurring within the
union, involving personality, political and cultural conflict. On top of that, as
shown above, merger management was of a low order.
However, there were attempts to improve the situation, arising from the
Eastbourne senior officers' meeting in April 2000; team briefing was
introduced and a menu of induction, leadership and management courses
was introduced. Managers typically however, identified initiatives that had
not been taken - lack of empowerment, lack of performance monitoring
and so on. Whilst the conflict might have been a prime cause of this, this
type of drift following merger is often identified with the 'combination
aftermath' stage of merger.
UNiFI
As Exhibit 9.1 suggests, UNiFI did undertake identifiable merger
management activities and its Investors in People and project management
initiatives seem to have achieved significant integration. The early IIP
accreditation reported that assimilation had exceeded expectations and
this was supported by staff comments in the report.
However, UNiFI has been discussing further merger for at least three
years. This was reported to staff in staff meetings but, although keeping
staff informed represented good practice, little detail was then available
and the initiatives seemed to be linked to some extent to poor financial
performance. Although, therefore, it could be argued that UNiFI had
reached psychological merger, the renewed uncertainty caused by new
merger talks created degrees of uncertainty typical of the pre-merger
phase of a merger. Staff must have been aware of these issues taking up
management time, along with 'Project Recovery.'
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