MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

• Policy and political boundaries
Unsurprisingly these are areas of significant boundary dispute.
In CWU, boundaries are obviously fuzzy because of the extent
of election amongst managers in the union – although
paradoxically, it is not an area of significant comment in that
union, except for a suggestion that elected managers might
pander to political groupings. In PCS there are some serious
reflections on these boundaries. There are examples of where
professional issues become political ones – office space or IT
systems are examples – and considerable concern that
negotiating these boundaries involves such political
compromises that it has a detrimental effect on managerial
responsibilities. One observation suggested, however, that it
was possible for managers to resist inappropriate political action
by escalating the political issue to senior management level.
Presumably this would only be effective in the event of a united
management being able to defend its boundary. In UNISON
there are examples of managers having to adjust their hats
depending on which role they were adopting and finding that a
difficult process. It was suggested that it was particularly difficult
in regions where the Regional Secretary was the General
Secretary’s representative in the region, a role which included
political elements, but where the General Secretary was elected
and the Regional Secretary was not. To defend one’s political
boundary, one certainly has to know with some degree of clarity
where the boundary lay – although the General Secretary
himself denied the existence of any such boundary.
Exhibit 9.12, based on comments reported in the case studies,
summarises how trade union managers go about managing
boundaries. It endeavours to ‘map’ modes of management against
ideas of co-operation and competition. As with any ‘scaled’ illustration
of this kind, the location of particular modes of boundary management
on the scales is subjective but it is intended to illustrate patterns of
interest.
These patterns demonstrate the diversity of strategies used by trade
union managers in all unions to manage boundaries – strategies that
appear from Exhibit 9.12 to be unrelated to the phase of merger
reached by the unions. They also demonstrate that it is not possible to
sustain any proposition which posits that trade union managers employ
any particular form of stakeholder management. Boundaries are
contested. Managers, as contestants, employ a range of strategies to
seek to defend and move the boundaries under contest.
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