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MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

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about to lock out a significant number of staff, this is going to have a<br />

bearing on where in the continuum a manager’s style rests; by contrast,<br />

if the task is the drafting of a long term strategic plan, the style adopted<br />

may be different.<br />

The context, however, may be a particularly significant factor. Three<br />

contextual contingencies may at this stage be identified. First, the trade<br />

union context is one where, in the UK, unions have been struggling to<br />

make headway. Retaining existing members and recruiting new ones,<br />

as well as improving services by (inter alia) providing 24 hour<br />

telephone access to services are| significant strategic objectives for<br />

many unions. Many unions are seeking to achieve this by seeking a<br />

change from a ‘servicing model’ (‘trade union officers, rather than lay<br />

representatives, provide support to members who encounter problems’<br />

Waddington and Kerr 2000:232) to an ‘organising model’, in which lay<br />

representatives are recruited, trained and resourced to provide support<br />

for members locally. This is not just a procedural change; it is in many<br />

cases a profound cultural change in which appointed officers give up<br />

areas of work in which they may have become specialist and which<br />

they value.<br />

It is also part of a corporately led strategic change. UNISON, for<br />

example, has set recruitment targets which are monitored<br />

managerially. Kelly and Heery (1994) found ambivalent attitudes to<br />

national initiatives interfering with officers’ own priorities (‘when they<br />

[national initiatives] are over, I’ll go back to my own priorities’: page 86).<br />

How to manage this change is an issue which managers need to<br />

consider. On the one hand, officers value their autonomy; on the other<br />

hand, organising and recruitment is seen as vital to union survival.<br />

Tannenbaum and Schmidt’s (1973) framework would suggest in these<br />

circumstances that management style would move rather more to the<br />

centre of the continuum.<br />

A second contextual contingency relates to whether or not<br />

management has in any respect changed since Dunlop wrote his study<br />

– indeed, since most of the bureaucracy theorists considered trade<br />

union governance. In so far as the management of people is<br />

concerned, there has been the onset of human resource management<br />

(HRM). This takes many forms, based on several different<br />

assumptions, but a definition which illustrates, it is suggested, a<br />

qualitative difference from a ‘command and control’ model is that of<br />

Keep (1989:10):- ‘If the term ‘human resource management’ is to be<br />

taken as something more than an empty ‘buzz phrase’, then the word’<br />

human’, in this context can only relate to the employees, past and<br />

present, of the enterprise. The use of the word ‘resource’, as opposed<br />

to commodity or cost, implies investment therein. The word<br />

‘management’, for its part, implies that strategies aimed at the<br />

motivation, development and deployment of this resource and its<br />

associated investment will be directed in such a way as to maximise its<br />

potential. Training is a prime investment in human resources and that<br />

41

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