MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

It does not seem fanciful to posit that there are connections between
these perceptions. A culture in which management is undervalued,
where managers feel embarrassed to manage, where individual
experiences have been centred on defending people rather than
holding them to account, where being a manager has in past
experience invited conflict and being a trade union negotiating officer
has meant acting with a considerable degree of independence, in at
least two of the case study unions – all this is not conducive to
undertaking managerial roles, particularly those which involve taking
any form of judgmental stance. This is the stance which may be
required in conduct or performance management and it seems to be
these managerial areas which are most the subject of difficulty. This
cultural environment seems to influence even those who may not
themselves have engaged in confrontational negotiations with
management over the years, so the constraints arising do not always
appear to derive from individual experience.
These analyses have been directed to identification of ‘meanings’ and
‘norms’ which might influence trade union managers in their
management of people. Modalities concerning resources are also a
factor. In all the unions except UNISON, these indicate that
centralisation is a modality in connection with resources and in two of
them, CWU and UNISON, political decision making is identified. These
modalities might be expected to both constrain and enable managers
as they engage in ‘meaningful’ managerial activities.
Merger management
Earlier in this chapter, there was a discussion of corporate approaches
taken by the case study unions to the management of their mergers,
identifying the consequent phase of merger they had reached. This
section looks at individual managerial activities.
The management of physical space and physical resources is of
interest for two reasons; first, it is an incident of merger management
and secondly it is a ‘modality’ having an impact on the way in which
managers undertake their trade union management roles (Hales 1999).
However, links between resource modalities and the space
management element of merger management are more difficult to
discern. There is significant awareness of the importance of the task to
merger but this appears to arise from a sense in all unions that the
management of space, in a merger context, had not been ideal. Such
activities that occurred were self-evidently designed to bring staff
together but not always in ways designed so that partner union staff
could work together. In CWU, for example, significant areas of the head
office building are still occupied by staff exclusively originating from one
union, together with any new staff appointed since merger.
As far as merger management itself is concerned, this can be observed
at different levels. In CWU and PCS, it was largely left to individual
managers. In CWU, there were individual managers who understood
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