MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Cognitive rules and culture
This may not only be an incident of the union’s training policy but may
be related to individual managers’ own insecurity in achieving a
position which involves undertaking tasks which have not been central
to their perceptions of what full time work in the union is about:-
I think in the macho environment of the trade union world there
is a reluctance to say "Okay, I'm a manager but I don't actually
know how to do it, so I will go on a course or I will get some
training or whatever". People are very reluctant to do that. It
seems to be acknowledging a deficiency. It isn't. It is actually
quite enjoyable, I think, for people to learn new skills. It's not
culturally welcome to admit that you don't know everything and
you need to go on a course. (Interviewee L)
Even in the case of one very thoughtful manager, there was a
perception that the union was not itself clear about what it wanted her
to do:-
If there was a dispute between myself and a member of staff it's
very unclear what my line of authority is. I certainly do not have
any formal line in terms of any appeal or grievance level. So that
makes it very difficult. So on the one hand you are supposed to
give the leadership, set the cultural tone, set the expectations,
the standards of work, have a word with them if they are off
course, there's no formal structure that confirms you have that
authority and no formal mechanism to seeing that through if you
meet a problem. So that's very frustrating .(Interviewee G)
In the period before the 2002 strategic planning exercise, several
managers perceived that there was a weakness in strategy – that
managers managed for the present, not the future and that they did not
communicate strategic objectives when they were in existence. It would
be misleading to visit that now because perceptions may be different.
There were, however, perceptions that constraints were imposed on
managers by the interface which they had to manage with political
issues:-
I suppose the constraints are a kind of political constraint in the
sense that, you know, it's easy to exploit the fact that you call
yourself a trade union (Interviewee B)
and by the interface they had to manage with lay members and lay
member structures:-
I think that the biggest constraint that you have between the
union and a company in the conventional sense is the role of the
executive. Sometimes there is a desire of the executive to
actually try and run the administration of the organisation or to
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