MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

not unusual, though this does not remove the manager’s responsibility
to manage in other ways. Indeed, Raelin (1991), looking at the clash of
cultures between professionals and managers, suggests a range of
mediation strategies in which managers can approach the issue of
supervising professionals.
There are criticisms of Mintzberg’s model (e.g.Hales 1999:341) but at
the same time a recognition that the work does carry an explanatory
account of managerial work, ‘one where the structural context in which
managers operate plays a problematic role’ (Hales 1999:341). Hales
himself has attempted a theoretical explanation for commonalities in
managerial work. He sketches a theory of how the defining
characteristic of managing – responsibility – is shaped by the
resources, cognitive rules and moral rules of the social systems in
which managers are located and the way they draw on those rules and
resources. The activities, substantive areas and characteristics of
managerial work which are common to managers are, Hales suggests,
‘traceable to the institutional, organisational and management
resources and rules which, together, shape managerial responsibility
and which are, in turn, reproduced by what managers do and how they
work.’ ‘Resources, cognitive rules and moral rules both constrain and
enable what they do and which are reproduced and reaffirmed by what
they do’ (page 343). In not for profit organisations, he says, cognitive
and moral rules may carry greater relative weight. (page 344)
Hales’ model is described in the diagram at Exhibit 2.5. It is of
particular importance in this study because, as has been mentioned on
a number of occasions, it is a highly effective vehicle for examining
trade union management. Chapter 4 will describe in more detail how
this is achieved but the view has been taken that examining the
resources, cognitive rules and moral rules of the social systems within
which trade union managers work will be of value in endeavouring to
explain how they go about their management activities. Hales’ (1999)
enables this to be done, just as Mintzberg’s (1994) framework helps to
identify particular categories of trade union management work. Hales’
model also maps with the realist character of this research in that it is
possible to argue that the ‘modalities’ which he identifies are equivalent
to realist ’mechanisms’ and thus enable the researcher to identify the
reasons why trade union managers behave in the way that they do.
For this reason, as will shortly appear, Hales’ (1999) model is one of
the principal frameworks employed in the analysis of this research into
the activities of trade union managers.
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