MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

about to lock out a significant number of staff, this is going to have a
bearing on where in the continuum a manager’s style rests; by contrast,
if the task is the drafting of a long term strategic plan, the style adopted
may be different.
The context, however, may be a particularly significant factor. Three
contextual contingencies may at this stage be identified. First, the trade
union context is one where, in the UK, unions have been struggling to
make headway. Retaining existing members and recruiting new ones,
as well as improving services by (inter alia) providing 24 hour
telephone access to services are| significant strategic objectives for
many unions. Many unions are seeking to achieve this by seeking a
change from a ‘servicing model’ (‘trade union officers, rather than lay
representatives, provide support to members who encounter problems’
Waddington and Kerr 2000:232) to an ‘organising model’, in which lay
representatives are recruited, trained and resourced to provide support
for members locally. This is not just a procedural change; it is in many
cases a profound cultural change in which appointed officers give up
areas of work in which they may have become specialist and which
they value.
It is also part of a corporately led strategic change. UNISON, for
example, has set recruitment targets which are monitored
managerially. Kelly and Heery (1994) found ambivalent attitudes to
national initiatives interfering with officers’ own priorities (‘when they
[national initiatives] are over, I’ll go back to my own priorities’: page 86).
How to manage this change is an issue which managers need to
consider. On the one hand, officers value their autonomy; on the other
hand, organising and recruitment is seen as vital to union survival.
Tannenbaum and Schmidt’s (1973) framework would suggest in these
circumstances that management style would move rather more to the
centre of the continuum.
A second contextual contingency relates to whether or not
management has in any respect changed since Dunlop wrote his study
– indeed, since most of the bureaucracy theorists considered trade
union governance. In so far as the management of people is
concerned, there has been the onset of human resource management
(HRM). This takes many forms, based on several different
assumptions, but a definition which illustrates, it is suggested, a
qualitative difference from a ‘command and control’ model is that of
Keep (1989:10):- ‘If the term ‘human resource management’ is to be
taken as something more than an empty ‘buzz phrase’, then the word’
human’, in this context can only relate to the employees, past and
present, of the enterprise. The use of the word ‘resource’, as opposed
to commodity or cost, implies investment therein. The word
‘management’, for its part, implies that strategies aimed at the
motivation, development and deployment of this resource and its
associated investment will be directed in such a way as to maximise its
potential. Training is a prime investment in human resources and that
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