MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

This bears out the view that trade union managers see this as a
problematic area. When interviewed, they tend to give the impression
that lack of performance or conduct management is an incident of the
system, rather than something for which they bear responsibility. Yet
the evidence suggests that this is a characteristic of the many, rather
than the few. First of all, it is possible to relate these attitudes in many
cases to a shared ‘meaning’ deriving, one may speculate, from a
culture in which ‘doing something to people’ is recognisable as a
principal management activity to which trade unionists are frequently
opposed. Secondly, in some unions – UNISON is a case in point –
managerial styles have been identified as being the very opposite of
directive and therefore, one might further speculate, making it more
difficult for trade union managers to become at all directive on the issue
of staff performance or conduct. On this argument, trade union
managers are themselves architects and members of the systems they
hold responsible for deficiencies in their ability to ensure good
performance. It is easy to see the connections which enable this
argument to be mounted.
Staff development
There is no quantifiable measure available to enable the extent of staff
development made available in the case study unions with the figures
estimated in literature in Chapter 2. It is possible to examine the extent
of systems in those unions for the delivery of training and development
opportunities and to examine whether management development is
available. Exhibit 9.8 presents a summary of this. It suggests that there
are corporate approaches to staff development and training in at least
two of the unions and to an extent in a third. Unions have always
provided courses for negotiating staff, often through the TUC, and it is
likely that this table does not fully reflect this type of training which may
not be authorised by some of the very senior managers in some of the
unions.
In UNISON and PCS managers appear positive about the need to
provide staff development. In UNiFI there seems a little more cynicism,
though this is not generally shared. A positive approach is an outcome
one would expect if the people orientation identified above is a reality. It
is noticeable, however, how little management training is provided,
except in UNISON. This was discussed earlier in the context of its
giving an indication of the extent of institutional support for the concept
of management. The extent to which people orientation is observable in
actual management practice has not been the subject of research and
is only discernible here from external documents, such as IIP
accreditations. But in that there is some suggestion that practice may
not wholly meet aspiration, it could be speculated that availability of
management training could be a key issue. It may be that managers
who profess a strong people orientation as part of their core principles,
the ‘norms’ that influence them, simply do not know how best to
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