MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Moral rules and trade union principles
interfere with it in ways that are not always helpful. If you are
managing a company you are managing a command structure;
we have this democratic structure. At the end of the day if they
don't like what you're doing they can actually act as the last
Court of Appeal. It is a constraint and we have a very big
executive -- it's like a mini conference -- and I don't think it's
helpful. (Interviewee O)
Managing democratic structures was elevated to the status of a rule in
one case:-
There are such political sensitivities that they are subject to what
I called the 51 week rule -- you do them 51 weeks before the
next annual conference. Consciously, I had held back on doing
unpopular things in relation to the staff until immediately after
conference to forestall any stirring that goes on. That is the
constraint. (Interviewee D)
Issues of boundary management and representative rationality are
significant and will be discussed below. At this stage it is sufficient to
note that, whatever positive attitudes CWU managers may have to the
fact of working in a democratic structure, aspects of that structure are
felt by some managers to be a constraint which has to be managed.
Systems relating to moral rules
5.9. We look here at whether managers in the CWU expressed any
espousal of principles having a bearing on how they managed in the
union, in particular on how they manage people. There are some
interesting contrasts in the way in which managers conceptualise their
values in this area. One manager equated trade union principles with a
concern for individual problems, a subset of ‘fairness’, one could
argue:-
If you go back to core trade union principles in allocating
resources you must have regard to the scale of the problem that
the member is facing and if you move too far away from that as
an allocation for resources you potentially get corrupt, if you
know it I mean. Because you are driven only by political
considerations (Interviewee G)
Others mentioned fairness specifically, but in the context of the need to
be firm at the same time:-
The trick is to be seen to be firm but fair. You can't have one
without the other. (Interviewee O)
It was just listening to people - firm but fair and we got
there.(Interviewee M)
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