MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

APPENDIX 5
SECOND STAGE – MODE OF UNDERTAKING MANAGERIAL ROLES
Stimuli (with consequential related mechanisms) for mode of
undertaking roles
• Being given managerial roles and/or responsibility for staff – perhaps
not previously having seen oneself as a manager.
• Going on a training course(s) and/or gaining increased understanding
of managerial issues
• Forms of structural arrangements in the union, a part of the union or
institutions relevant to the role
• Issues relating to staff or management – good or bad staff or
management; meetings with other people, up or down; conflict
management.
• Work pressures, sometime called by resource issues relating to people
or finance
• Cultural or values issues, often related to the cultures of partner unions;
secrecy or openness.
• Matters related to the process or content of setting objectives and
priorities or issues arising (for example IIP)
Description of cognitive
processes relevant to
principal stimuli/mechanism Managerial actions
• Relating the experiences that
managers have had, formal
and informal, and the
implications of taking on new
roles, in new structures to their
core values as trade unionists
– to be supporting people at
work – and their core work –
for example, negotiation. New
code : people orientation
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There is a dichotomy; those people
for whom their approach to people
means that they recognise that their
approach is on the ‘soft’ side – going
the extra mile to help people, seeking
a civilised culture in the office,
showing respect and valuing staff,
seeking or having an aspiration
towards openness or else adopting a
management style that involves
delegation, facilitating, empowerment
or consultation; and those who felt
that, because of the nature of the
trade union and trade unionism, it
was necessary to be harder. Those
people felt that the consequence of
this approach to people was that
there arose a culture in which people
were not confronted or disciplined
when they would have been in other
organisations. Some managers