Abstract:
This paper is concerned with a group of people who are almost entirely absent
from the literature on trade union governance, trade union managers. It looks
at various governance models and seeks to make links between that literature
and analogous literature in the management field, in particular between that
on the polyarchal theory of trade union organisation and that on stakeholder
management. It concludes that managers have become visible and that they
seek to manage their organisations subject to a number of constraints arising
in some cases from the fact that management remains a somewhat
problematic concept in unions. Although the values of trade union managers
result in their taking a positive attitude to the democratic process, the
boundaries between their roles and the roles of elected activists in the
governance structures are unclear and are consequently contested.
