Trade union leadership

Citation

Redman, T. (2012), "Trade union leadership", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 33 No. 8. https://doi.org/10.1108/lodj.2012.02233haa.001

Trade union leadership

Article Type: Preface From: Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Volume 33, Issue 8.

There has been a rapidly growing literature on the nature and consequences of leadership in many contexts. Managerial leadership in the private, public, and voluntary sectors is now widely studied. We know a lot about leadership in other organizational contexts, for example, political and Church leaders. However, our knowledge of trade union leadership is much more limited and few leadership scholars have conducted studies in trade unions. Equally, union leadership was once a popular topic of research by industrial relations specialists, but now appears to have fallen rather out of fashion.

Thus, the effect of union leadership style on union members has been neglected in the literature. The main focus of the limited range of studies has been on the democratic nature of leadership decision making. Here the link between membership participation and democratic leadership style is relatively well established. Similarly, a few studies have examined “union barriers”, defined as the actions taken by union leaders that result in members feeling discouraged from participating (e.g. centralized decision making, gender-biased appointment processes of leaders) and found that these reduced member participation in union activities and members’ commitment to their unions.

This special issue, with a foreword by Lord Monks, one of the most authoritative figures in trade union leadership, and its collection of five stimulating papers aims to address this neglected area of research. In their extensive review of the literature on union commitment and participation, Gregor Gall and Jack Fiorito seek to move us towards better theory on the relationship between commitment, participation, and leadership in unions. Gill Kirton and Geraldine Healy focus on the under-representation of women in union leadership in Barbados, while Geoff Plimmer and Stephen Blumenfeld have conducted a cross sectional study of trade union delegate leadership and membership commitment. In the penultimate paper, David Preece and Carolyn Ward examine the impact of privatization and restructuring of social housing upon trade union leadership, and in the final paper of this special issue, Julie Sadler explores the direct and indirect effect of high- and low-level union leaders on various forms of member participation.

Tom Redman