La nueva sala capitular y el nuevo salón del piano

“Middle management is not a well-defined concept: a chain of middle-line managers with formal authority, which connects the operating core to the strategic apex (Mintzberg, 1975) or a chain which runs from just below the top to the first-line supervisors. The middle managers in this chain differ in status, knowledge, career possibilities, responsibilities, etc. The only thing they have in common is that they all are “in between”, not an easy place in any organization” (Van Gils, 1997, 43).

Middle managers’ contributions to organizations, their role expectations, and the activities they perform to achieve their own and their organization’s goals remain misunderstood and unclear. In times of instability, economic downturns and technological innovations, large, complex organizations tend to look to contract the middle management ranks (Hassard et al., 2009). Instead, organizations need to be clear about the contributions of their middle managers before eliminating their positions in attempts to flatten hierarchies and close budget gaps. Studies that have explored middle manager role behaviors and expectations are reviewed in the following paragraphs.

Who are the middle managers? How are they distinguished from executive or frontline managers? Descriptions of middle managers’ defining characteristics vary throughout the literature. Identifying middle managers may be more complex in professional service organizations like libraries, which have a cadre of professionals who provide specialized services and who also occupy positions in a hierarchical bureaucracy in which numerous tasks are departmentalized. According to some scholars, the defining characteristic is the intermediary place held in the organizational chart as supervisory personnel that appear between top management and frontline supervisors; in other words, middle managers supervise supervisors and they are supervised by others (Bailey, 1981; Gamaluddin, 1973; Sullivan, 1992; Dutton & Ashford, 1993; Beck & Plowman, 2009; Carlevale, 2010). According to the definition of some researchers, there would be very few MMs in libraries: Managers two or three levels below CEO and one level above line employees and professionals (Huy, 2001; Smith et al., 2010; Dutton & Ashford, 1993; Wooldridge & Floyd, 1990; Beck & Plowman, 2009); these MMs also include frontline supervisors. Some MMs report directly to managing directors and are responsible for overseeing a functional or operational department (Hales & Mustapha, 2000). MMs supervise a certain number of direct reports (Plate, 1969); or they supervise a certain class of employee (e.g., professionals, or those who also supervise others (Plate, 1969; Bailey, 1981)). MMs have also been described based on their metaphorical place in the organization’s universe, as the interpreter

or go-between who translates the organization’s goals for and to the workers and who reports departmental successes and challenges to the top management (Van Gils, 1997; Osterman, 2008). Middle managers make decisions about how to implement the organization’s strategic objectives (Beck & Plowman, 2009; Floyd & Wooldridge, 1996; Williams, 2001). Many managers in today’s organizations may not have subordinates but may oversee primary cross-departmental activities (Mantere, 2008; Osterman, 2008); this type of MM may be found in both upper and operational middle management (Mantere, 2008). According to Van-Gils, MMs embody the roles codified by Mintzberg (1973): interpersonal, decisional and informational roles; however, these role behaviors vary depending upon the nature of the organization and the external environment (Lynch, 1976), or the nature of the MMs’ duties and careers (Osterman, 2008). Clearly, “middle management” is unclear.

A recent attempt to define middle management gives a broad scope of several activities:

“Middle managers are individuals who make decisions about how to implement the organization’s strategic objectives . . . Middle managers interpret information and knowledge from top managers to make it meaningful to those below them in the hierarchy who are responsible for technical activities. At the same time they interpret information and knowledge from functional managers about technical and day-to-day realities of the organization . . . They then select those pieces of information that need top management attention. Thus, middle managers are responsible for interactions with those above them, with those they supervise, and with their peers.” (Beck & Plowman, 2009)

In addition to Beck and Plowman’s stipulation that middle managers implement strategic objectives, other research supports the notion that middle managers are also involved in strategy formation. The operational definition used in the current study is vague enough to include myriad activities and captures the “in-betweenness” of middle management positions: “any individual who is regularly involved in, or interfaces with, the organization’s operations and who has some access to upper management” (Floyd & Wooldridge, 1996, 111).

In 1990, Dopson and Stewart opined: “There is, therefore, no comprehensive body of theoretical or empirical knowledge on the role, function and responsibilities of the middle manager” (1990, 9). The current literature is still not comprehensive, but the empirical knowledge has grown in the ensuing years since Dopson and Stewart wrote of their concern. Several researchers have made empirical contributions regarding the possible role expectations of the middle manager in terms of strategy (Floyd & Wooldridge, 1996, 1997, 2000; Wooldridge & Floyd, 1990; Wooldridge et al., 2008;

Williams, 2001); behaviors (Luthans & Larsen, 1986; Luthans et al., 1988b, 1985, 1988a); change management (Osterman, 2008; Kanter, 1986); adaption to restructuring (Hassard et al., 2009); boundary-spanning, internally as well as externally (Osterman, 2008); and sensemaking/sensegiving (Smith et al., 2010; Beck & Plowman, 2009). Perhaps because this territory is so murky, some researchers do not specify the characteristics of their middle managers beyond distinguishing them as not top managers and not frontline supervisors. Their focus is solely on the roles assumed by and expected of these managers. In these studies, MMs’ strategic, sensegiving, and/or coordinating roles are the primary considerations (Floyd & Wooldridge, 1996, 2000; Mantere, 2008; Osterman, 2008). Coordination, or working together to carry out the organization’s objectives and tasks, is a key role that middle managers have had throughout the 20th century, and this role continues. Middle managers in the early 20th century coordinated the tasks of the departments in their organizations (Niles, 1941), and arguably, for today’s middle managers, leading and coordinating the work of teams is an important consideration (Osterman, 2008). In fact, it may be one of the few universal roles among middle managers, especially when “middle managers” with no direct reports are included in the analysis – for example, project managers whose work crosses multiple organizational boundaries have coordination as one of their chief concerns.

Previous studies have used interviews (Luthans et al., 1988a; Smith et al., 2010; Floyd & Wooldridge, 1992), questionnaires (Floyd & Wooldridge, 2000), observation (Luthans & Lockwood, 1984; Smith et al., 2010) and document analysis (Smith et al., 2010) to gather data about the role behaviors of middle managers. Luthans et al. (1988a) observed a broad range of 457 managers across several organizations and established four categories of behavior (see Appendix C for a comprehensive list): traditional management, human resources management, networking, and routine communication. These categories and data are useful for discussion of managerial behaviors. The “real managers” studies included a wide variety of organizations so as to make broad statements about management exclusive of organization type.

Smith et al. (2010) found that successful middle managers have similar values and participated in “everyday sensegiving” activities in order to increase awareness of those values among their employees. Based on observations of and interviews with middle managers across several award-winning plants in several industries, the common values identified were people, openness, community and being positive. The authors also suggest a common set of sentiment outcomes and substantive outcomes; that is,

there are tangible and intangible outcomes, and everyday sensegiving presents many opportunities for the manager to explicitly and symbolically influence performance and morale. The authors link the plant managers’ values and sensegiving activities to clear expectations, enhanced motivation and commitment (sentiment outcomes) and to company performance and successful change efforts (substantive outcomes). These techniques also helped to connect espoused values to enacted values. Their findings indicate that the symbolic aspects of middle managers’ activities may be more important than the instrumental ones. Sensegiving will be discussed in further detail below.

Taken together, these two studies suggest methods for exploring the contributions of middle management in a comprehensive way. Luthans et al. (1988a) used interviews, questionnaires and observation of hundreds of mid-level managers, their subordinates and colleagues from numerous organizations in order to describe the behaviors and activities of these managers. Through interviews with and observation of the plant managers, Smith et al. (2010) tried to make some connections between the managers’ behaviors and the organizations’ goals, values and performance. This research influenced the methods chosen for the current study.