MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

exact nature of the relationship has changed for almost all of them,
there is a strong commitment made to the relationships between
managers and lay members in furthering the union’s objectives. The
case study cites a senior manager as saying that managing the lay
structure is part and parcel of the job, and if you can’t do that, you can’t
do the job.
In UNISON, the commitment seems to be to partnership with lay
members. This is an imprecise concept and can therefore bring its own
problems of defining boundaries. One could argue that this is what
many managers have articulated in all the unions, but it is striking the
number of managers who use the word, some in very principled terms.
These issues of ‘norms’ can be approached from another angle when
examining managers’ responses in discussions about the extent to
which their unions were member led, officer led or partnership in
character, using the simplified form of the terms. This is relevant to the
extent to which these imparted ‘meanings’ influenced their managerial
actions.
Exhibit 9.10 presents a visual representation of how this idea might
apply in the four case study unions and their predecessors.
ucw cwu ncu
cpsa pcs ptc
nwsa
unifi
371
unifi bifu
nupe unison nalgo
cohse
Leadership predominance Partnership Membership participation
EXHIBIT 9.10. Movements in perceptions of governance (adapted
from Fairbrother (2000)
As with the application of any idea of this type, this is based on
subjective assessment. But it sits as closely to the evidence as
possible. CWU seems to be engaged in a slightly grudging form of
partnership, characterised by conflictual relations with lay members
and where managers, who are predominantly from a UCW background
and a significant number of whom are themselves elected, have had to
make cultural shifts to cope with a new environment. PCS managers