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3.5.3
Personnel management
Not perhaps a field one would think of immediately as having
relevance in the Church, but the relationships bishop/incumbent and
incumbent/parishioners are essentially human relationships and as
such inevitably give rise to differences of opinion and, on odd
occasion when that thick layer of goodwill wears thin, outright
dispute. There would seem to be a prima facie case for suggesting
that techniques such as the analysis of human differences and of the
interface between people in a work environment would have potential
value in managing a diocese.
There appears to be a strong desire for autonomy among parishes,
a feeling that they, not the diocese, know best how to handle the
Church's money
(C2)
, "there is some feeling that the diocese is the
taxman...the diocese has got to be very careful about nosing in"
(C4)
,
although a former diocesan secretary in Manchester has opined that
"Many parishes do not know the extent to which they can be helped:
it is our business to tell them"
(B23)
. It is difficult however to
disentangle this desire for autonomy from a more technical (and
fundamental) weakness in communication. Occasionally in the interviews
at diocesan level there seemed to be a sense of parishes being 'them
out there', and it was complemented by a feeling of doubt bordering
almost on mistrust that sometimes seemed to be just under the surface
of interviews at parochial level. It was a recognition of the
inadequate state of parochial/diocesan communications that led Kinq
et al to produce their information system for the Blackburn diocese
(P5)
.
Regrettably their system has never been implemented and we are thus
no farther forward in knowing how far parishes might wish to take
advantage of facilities which can more economically be deployed at
diocesan level.
