MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Moral rules and trade union principles
Another manager celebrates the involvement of Executive members in
her work, having taken the initiative in widening their roles:-
The executive thought their only job was to sit on committees
and pontificate. Mine are getting really quite good at doing more
hands on work. We have had a strategic debate about it. We
have done a strategic analysis with the telecoms executive
about what the industrial challenges are in the sector and what
the implications are for how we organise ourselves internally. I
have got buy in to two documents and I kind of keep them up
and keep coming back to them with the executive because I
have got to implement chunks of it. So I have started the
structure, a strategic analysis and then it was not a total
strategic plan because I do not control all of the bits. I am
dependent on some people to deliver but it was an attempt as
far as I could at a strategic plan. I am trying to track delivery…..It
is not producing the change at the rate we did but if you were to
look at it compared with two years ago there has been a
transformation of attitudes. Executive members have been quite
surprised. Issues have blown up and I have said "I have not got
the resources; you are an executive member, you are on fulltime
facilities". And it is amazing; some of them have done very
good jobs out there on hot issues. (Interviewee G)
Faith in the democratic process can come, however, with views on the
way in which boundaries should be drawn on a strategic level:-
Now my faith in the democratic process, I'm just as likely to be
wrong as they are to be right but I would like to think, and I think
this is the role of officers, you have got a degree of experience.
I don't want to stress the football metaphor too much but it's a bit
like going to the crowd every Saturday saying, who do you think
we should play today? You could do that and they may come up
with a perfect team selection but you can't do that every
Saturday . Somebody is required to say, this Saturday I think
this. At the end of that period of office, they have the ability to
say -- they may well do it to me, who knows -- your judgment
over this five-year period has been more wrong than right, or the
reverse. That is the role. (Interviewee B)
So the principle of accountability to the members is defined by this
elected manager in a way that influences his approach to the
management of his relationships within the union’s democratic
structures. It is fair to say, however, that there is a good deal of
criticism of aspects of the systems of representative rationality with
which managers have to work. The first of these relates to the
consequences of annual elections:-
It's very important that the General Secretary is elected. It's
important that the Executive is elected. There needs to be facility
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