MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

High
Degree of
organisational
support for
management
Low
2. Cocooned official
1. Trade union official
Low Degree to which managerial role accepted High
EXHIBIT 9.4 Typology of the development of the role of trade
union manager
One issue that was raised in the case studies was the extent to which
election was a factor in managers accepting their roles. This was
something raised particularly in CWU, which had more elected officials
than in other unions and where managers typically expressed doubts
about whether the National and Assistant Secretaries, particularly,
accepted that they were managers. It was also suggested that election
limited the time horizon of elected managers and therefore affected
their ability to act strategically.
Whilst it is an attractively intuitive position that election does act in this
way, it is not supported by the evidence. It was the new General
Secretary of the CWU, after all, who introduced that union’s strategic
planning process shortly after his election, which hardly suggests a lack
of strategic focus. There are examples in the CWU of elected
managers finding it difficult to act managerially, or acting
inappropriately, but this is based on the assumptions of those reporting
such examples that those people have not accepted managerial roles
and, in this study, there is no evidence of that. The evidence is of
interviewees’ perceptions.
Proposition 1 in this research suggested that various specific incidents
of merger were significant factors in the acceptance of managerial roles
by trade union managers. Because of merger, all the unions had
become substantial businesses which, however far individuals had or
had not moved in their recognition of the importance of management,
required some degree of management. This was one of the reasons
that merged unions were chosen for this study in the first place. Indeed,
355
4. Trade union manager
3. Cocooned manager