MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

development. In the event, links were discernible. Chapter 9 presented
7 hypotheses relating to those links. Although it is reasonable, one
might conclude, to expect management to be more developed in
unions that in later phases of merger, there are two qualifications. First,
it is possible that the reason unions did not proceed to later phases is
precisely because of the lack of development of management as a
concept within those unions. If management is a difficult idea, then
merger management will be just as difficult – leading to a rather circular
scenario in which management does not develop as an idea because
the union does not proceed to psychological merger. Secondly, the lack
of institutional support for management does not mean that
management is not taking place. Managers may be in cocoons but they
accept their roles, recognise the need for management and seek to
practise it as best they can, limited mainly by the lack of training that
most of them receive in such circumstances and, often, cultures in
which management is seen as lacking value.
Proposition 3 asserted that experiences in confronting management in
past careers would translate into the problematisation of management
within unions. The idea that management was a problematic concept
was based on the finding by Ouroussof (1993) in her extensive
anthropological study of UNISON’s constituent unions prior to merger –
a finding replicated by Kelly and Heery (1994). This was postulated in a
proposition in this research. The implication of that proposition, it was
assumed, was that constraints on their managerial activities would be
perceived by trade union managers arising from the problematic nature
of the role. The research largely supported Ouroussof’s (1993A)
conclusion. The research also found that managers perceived a series
of constraints, the most common of which related to performance or
conduct management. Hales’ (1999) framework invites the researcher
to postulate links between ‘meanings’, based on cognitive rules arising
in a particular managerial environment, and managerial actions.
Ouroussof herself (1993B:13) implicitly makes this link when she talks
of the word ‘manager’ being, with organisational members,
‘synonymous with indifference to people with less institutional power
than themselves’. So one might expect the ‘meaning’ of management
to incorporate a belief that one should somehow redress the balance of
power.
Articulation of the existence of constraints was made not only by
people who had themselves negotiated with management but also by
managers with other life experiences. So it is possible to suggest that
cultural ‘meanings’ have arisen from the core experiences of
organisational members that impact on the perceptions of trade union
managers about the constraints that influence the way they carry out
their roles.
The activities of trade union managers
Chapter 2 notes that there is little literature available describing what
trade union managers do. This study has sought an answer to the
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