MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

This evidence enables some associations to be made between the
stage that the case study unions have reached in merger and the
institutionalisation by the organisation, and the internalisation by the
individual, of the concept of management.
CWU
As noted above, the CWU is at the earliest stage of the four unions in
the phases of merger. Little real effort was exerted in dealing with the
separate existences of, particularly, the postal and telecommunications
parts of the union. Strategic planning offers the prospect of a more
corporate approach but at the time of this research it had not had time
to show how it might contribute to moving the union to a state of
psychological merger where, despite differences in industrial
organisation and culture, ambiguities were clarified and co-operation
and tolerance arose.
In the CWU, all but one manager accepted the managerial role. But
that one, and another previous General Secretary, fulfilled that role by
delegating substantial parts of it to others. There is evidence too that
senior elected managers, as a matter of practice, expected others to
deal with their managerial problems. This evidence also suggests that
senior managers were in doubt about whether other ‘officers’ accepted
any managerial responsibilities.
This speculation was, at least in part, inaccurate since interviewees did
accept that role. Given the lack of institutional support for the role,
consistent with the lack of institutional attention given to the merger,
this means that managers were to some extent cocooned, seeking to
undertake managerial functions but, as one said, defining the role
themselves because the system didn’t and because, consequently,
there was no management training available to help them as
individuals come to terms with that role.
So there was a lack of institutional acceptance of management in a
union which had given little corporate attention to the management of
its merger and which, consequently, had developed only slowly as a
single, merged, entity. These links could have been in either direction;
that is to say that lack of attention to the management of the merger
could have resulted from the undeveloped state of management
generally – or else the undeveloped state of management could have
resulted from the failure to create a coherent enitity requiring
management. To some extent both hypotheses could be true. What
does appear to be the case is that there are links.
PCS
PCS is more clearly at the merger aftermath stage of merger. The ‘us’
and ‘them’ attitudes postulated may not remain so evident at staff level
but, at least until the departure of the last of the two Joint General
Secretaries, it was evident at senior management level and between
management and lay stakeholders. Cultural ambiguities remained as
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