Trade union cultures, structures and procedures differ considerably from those of commercial businesses or public authorities. Few union leaders enjoy the powers of a chief executive. The most energetic shareholder activists place few restrictions on a managing director's discretion and autonomy compared to union general secretaries' accountability to their conference and executive committee. Few would doubt the importance of democratic accountability but it is entirely legitimate to point out that some aspects of trade union democracy do cause particular problems for the effective management of the organisation and may, in certain respects, undermine the union's performance. Without wishing to suggest that each conference resolution or executive decision be subject to rigorous cost-benefit analysis, organisational resources and capacities must become a more prominent factor in the determination of union policies and strategies.
Trade unions are sophisticated organisations with complex objectives.
But this raises more questions than answers. Unlike businesses, unions do not have a simple, quantifiable measure of success such as market share, profitability or added value. For trade unions, financial viability is a necessary condition of survival and success but is no more than a means to an end. Many problems of trade union management arise from the fact that organisational objectives are manifold, complex, often inconsistent, occasionally contradictory and rarely capable of being measured. A union in the retail sector, for example, is more likely to prioritise recruitment of new members as a measurement of success since the turnover of employees is such that such unions often have to re-recruit a large percentage of their membership each year simply to maintain existing membership levels.