MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

leadership predominance and, in the perceptions of some managers, a
higher trust environment existed, it could be argued that relations
rested on perceptions of the appropriate relationship between the
parties, thus demonstrating the third dimension of power (Lukes 1974).
There were several instances, over political boundaries, where
technical or physical space issues became political ones and the view
was expressed that only in a financial crisis could, in effect, rationality
defeat power; thus modifying Flyvberg’s (1998) hypothesis that, in open
confrontations, rationality would yield to power. There was also one
clear statement that, in certain circumstances, managers would be
engaged in some Freudian way in trying to find ways to undermine a
‘ridiculous’ membership decision – a situation which Marxist writers
such as Kelly (1988) would probably see as evidence of a
manifestation of the class struggle (though the manager who made the
observation would probably be quick to claim a Marxist pedigree).
This study, then, does not purport to have analysed these
manifestations of power strategies involving trade union managers on
the basis that this would be a one dimensional exercise, given the
nature of the research. It has, though, undertaken an assessment of
the character of managerial boundary management against dimensions
of competition and co-operation. These are dimensions familiar in the
power and conflict resolution literature (see e.g. Deutsch 1973;
Coleman 2003) where they are seen as being at either end of a
continuum of relations. Exhibit 9.12 reveals a pattern of responses
going from one end of the continuum to the other, demonstrating the
impossibility of maintaining, on any practical or theoretical basis, that
trade union managers practise normative stakeholder management in
respect of stakeholders within the union’s democratic structures.
As Chapter 9 points out, the responses in Exhibit 9.12 do not ‘map’
against any notions of greater or lesser degrees of partnership working,
insofar as those are ascertainable. Nor do they relate to the phase of
merger that the union has reached. Exhibit 9.10 sought to estimate
cultural movements on merger so that unions were categorised (no
doubt imprecisely) not only by the extent to which they might engage in
partnership working but how they might have arrived at that position,
using a modification of Fairbrother’s (2000) framework. Before looking
in a little more detail at whether any other ideas of governance can help
to model how union managers and activists relate in that process, there
is one idea about cultural movements that should be flagged up.
Cartwright and Cooper (1996:63) suggest that cultural movement in
mergers is important. As reported in Chapter 2, the key issue for them
in successful mergers is whether the culture of the new organisation
imposes more or less constraints on organisational members as
individuals. Chapter 9 distinguishes between the attitudes of managers
and lay members in situations where culture is moving towards less (or
more) autonomy for managers and/or towards more (or less) autonomy
for activists. It suggests, consistent with Cartwright and Cooper (1996),
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