MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Financial systems and planning
At the time the research into the CWU took place, financial systems
were certainly not rigorous, but the need for a rigorous approach had
arisen from the new management team seeking to tackle the union’s
financial problems, the context being one where the union’s
development of management generally was at an early stage,
consistent withy the earlier phase of merger which it had reached. But
the systems in the other unions were rigorous and controlled, even if
the centralised nature of those in PCS and UNiFI caused stresses
amongst those who had insufficient authority to deploy resources
themselves. The latter union did have aspirations to devolve budgets
when the time became appropriate but had not done so when this
research ended. If, however, links between planning and budgetary
control are a measure of rigour, none of the unions measured up. All
believed that their planning processes would determine levels of
activity in their unions; all but PCS sought to link planning and
resources in some way but not in ways which commercial
organisations, or even public sector ones, would usually recognise.
Representative rationality
In all four unions, lay members were involved in resource allocation to
a greater or lesser extent. This is not a surprise; if there is one aspect
of governance in which one would expect the representative system to
be involved, it is that of resource disposition. There are understandings,
certainly in three of the unions, that the cost of the representative
system is an issue in budgetary control and that it carries with it the risk
of its being seen that the administrative tail is wagging the
representative dog. They could, of course, argue that more meetings
do not equate with more representative governance. However, unions
seem to be very slow to take the step of curtailing representative
structures in order to free resources for other purposes, or just to save
money in a crisis. It is suggested in CWU and UNiFI, both in some
financial difficulty when the research took place, that these issues
needed to be addressed but by the time the research had been
concluded, they had not done so in any corporate ways.
‘Fairness’
In all unions beliefs were expressed about the need to ensure that
resource distribution should be issue driven rather than responding to
the power of numbers. It did seem, in fact, that structural steps had
been taken to prevent the latter; in two unions (PCS and UNiFI), per
capita budgeting had been an issue that had been defeated. In UNiFI
also, the principle of company committee autonomy underpins this. Not
all the company committees relate to large banks. Small building
societies and financial institutions have their own committees – some
managers serviced from Bournemouth or Raines Park institutions on
the Channel Islands where, they said, air fares were the highest in
Europe - and managers dealing with these smaller organisations were
confident that they were entitled to manage sufficient resources. In
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