MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

not been appreciated during the interview. Speech recognition software
(Dragon Naturally Speaking v 4) was used for transcription, which more
than halved the time taken. Hard copies of the interviews were filed
and used for analysis.
All interviews were organized around the aide-memoire which is
included in Appendix 2. This summarized the propositions in a left hand
column so that the interview could be steered not only by reference to
topic but also to theory.
Opening of interview
The opening of the interview was designed to allow the interviewee to
talk in a relatively unstructured way, about her or his role in the merger.
This was based on the slightly homespun belief that the ice could be
broken by people being able to talk in their own terms about an issue
that was familiar to them without, so to speak, engaging brain. The
closer the interview took place to the merger, the more this question
resulted in long answers. In some cases, people spoke for five or 10
minutes without intervention. Where appropriate, the interview was
steered towards issues concerning stakeholders and the relationship of
lay member stakeholders to appointed officials in the old and new
unions.
Union Managers
In the next section, the issue of the acceptance of managerial roles and
responsibilities was covered. The Dunlop (1990) summary of areas
union managers had in common with managers elsewhere and those
which were unique was outlined and interviewees asked for their views
on what trade union managers did. Interviewees were probed about
specific issues they raised about how they managed and, if necessary,
they were asked about issues such as management style and
delegation. The issue of whether management as a concept was
problematic was raised and interviewees asked for their views. If
appropriate, interviewees were asked about managing full time officers,
something arising out of Kelly and Heery’s (1994) study.
Stakeholders and governance
In the next section of the interview, interviewees were asked for their
relationships with lay structures and their approaches to their
management of those relationships. Attempts were made to see if
there were ethical issues behind the way in which they defined their
relationships with the governance structures of the union and whether
the Rule Book itself had an overt role in how they approached the
issue. Issues of legitimacy were raised where possible, both for
reasons related to union governance but also in the light of the Mitchell,
Agle and Wood (1997) model of stakeholder management. Questions
were asked about the way in which interviewees managed conflict
between stakeholders.
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