Part 3 of the Unfrozen Loop
Start it close to the work
The people who do the work shape how the change lands in it.
Should a change be shaped by the people who do the work, or designed above them and rolled out? This is the most studied part of the Loop, and the most contested: many studies support it, and many find it depends.
52studies inform this part
26 support · 23 mixed · 3 challenge · 3 rated high strength
Questions about this part
Supports 26 studies
The Effects of Empowerment on Attitudes and Performance: The Role of Social Support and Empowerment BeliefsAt a large trucking company, a randomized empowerment program raised unit managers' sense of control only where they felt their own bosses backed them, and it also lifted their units' measured performance.High‐commitment work systems and middle managers' innovative behavior in the Chinese context: The moderating role of work‐life conflicts and work climateIn 113 Chinese manufacturing firms, high-commitment HR systems went with more innovative middle managers, but heavy work-family conflict weakened that link, less so where the climate made it easier to share family concerns.Transformational leadership and corporate entrepreneurshipAcross 55 units in 27 firms, units with more transformational leadership showed more corporate entrepreneurship, partly through members' shared belief that they could succeed together, and the firm's empowerment climate shaped how strongly that worked.How middle managers manage the political environment to achieve market goals: Insights from C hina's state‐owned enterprisesIn four large Chinese state-owned firms, operational middle managers actively dealt with local political actors to hit market goals, and the authors suggest they were better placed for this bridging work than top executives or frontline staff.The Translational Role of Hybrid Nurse Middle Managers in Implementing Clinical Guidelines: Effect of, and upon, Professional and Managerial HierarchiesIn two hospitals, nurse middle managers first got clinical guidelines working, but in one, where they coped less well with pressure to meet regulations and save money, the change faded as old hierarchies reasserted themselves.Reversing course: Competing technologies, mistakes, and renewal in flat panel displaysAfter IBM's plasma display bet failed, middle-level champions recast the case for LCDs in business terms for senior managers, and IBM went on to lead LCDs.Materializing Strategy: The Role of Comprehensiveness and Management Controls in Strategy Formation in Volatile EnvironmentsAmong middle managers in volatile environments, comprehensive strategy-making and results-based and professional controls went with better implementation performance, while the authors argue that process controls may hamper strategy.Humble Chief Executive Officers’ Connections to Top Management Team Integration and Middle Managers’ ResponsesIn 63 private Chinese firms, humble CEOs were linked to more unified top teams, and middle managers below them saw a more empowering climate and were more engaged, committed and better performing.People and process, suits and innovators: the role of individuals in firm performanceDifferences among individual people mattered more to firm performance than usually assumed, and variation among middle managers explained far more of the gaps between firms than variation among people in innovative roles.Whither Middle Management? Empowering Interface and the Failure of Organizational ChangeAt a large financial services firm, the authors trace a failed change initiative to closed-off executive and rank-and-file systems that left middle managers powerless, an outcome they link to the firm being bought out.Normalized Intensity: The New Labour Process of Middle ManagementIn 64 interviews across five UK organizations that delayered and downsized, middle managers reported more autonomy but longer, more intense hours, closer monitoring and fewer promotion prospects.Committees as strategic practice: The role of strategic conversation in a public administrationIn a public administration rolling out staff development, middle and senior managers shaped strategy not just in formal committee meetings but in informal conversations around them, where they built shared understanding, aligned on issues and pre-arranged support.Strategy making as iterated processes of resource allocationFirms facing similar new-business opportunities ended up with different commitments: early results raised or lowered middle managers' enthusiasm and top managers' confidence in them, and repeated funding rounds escalated or wound down the bet.From resistance to readiness: the role of mediating variablesIn a survey of 276 Indian middle managers, trust, felt organizational support and emotional attachment to the organization helped explain the link between resistance and readiness to change, narrowing the gap between the two.Strategy development through interview technique from narrative therapyA purchasing department wrote its own strategy by telling stories about work, and the director signed off on it.Materializing Strategy in Mundane Tools: the Key to Coupling Global Strategy and Local Strategy Practice?In one bank branch, a middle manager turned head-office strategy into simple local tools, engaging frontline staff and hitting the targets senior leaders wanted.Video methods in strategy research: Focusing on embodied cognitionApplying a video-analysis toolkit to middle managers during a large strategic change, the authors argue that much apparent shared understanding was emotional contagion, carried by managers' bodies as well as their words.Stimulating Knowledge Search Routines and Architecture Competences: The Role of Organizational Context and Middle ManagementAt Gamma, an ICT multinational built on replicating standard solutions, a loose structure and no central knowledge store went with middle managers running intense, cross-silo searches that pieced together answers to unusual problems.The Knowledge Brokering Role of the Hybrid Middle Level Manager: the Case of HealthcareDrawing on healthcare, the authors argue that hybrid middle managers who straddle clinical and managerial work play a strategic role passing knowledge between the two, something calls to cut middle layers overlook.Constructing Interlocking Rationales in Top‐driven Strategic RenewalIn a top-driven renewal, after top managers repositioned the middle level, middle managers built reputation through operational efficiency, then shaped their own strategic role, until top and middle were reinforcing each other's efforts.The Interface of the Top Management Team and Middle Managers: A Process ModelThe authors propose that how top teams and middle managers interact, including their role behaviors and mutual trust, shapes both the quality of strategic decisions and how well they are carried out.Corporate entrepreneurship in the face of changing competitionIn six Thai manufacturing firms, management support, rewards and worker job discretion were tied to internal and financial improvement, while time for idea generation and cross-boundary communication were not significantly tied to corporate entrepreneurship.Middle Managers, Strategic Sensemaking, and Discursive CompetenceDrawing on field vignettes, the authors show middle managers moved strategic change by pairing the right words with the right setting, using familiar verbal, symbolic and cultural cues to pull in people from other levels.Organizational Linkages for Surviving Technological Change: Complementary Assets, Middle Management, and AmbidexterityIBM and NCR are used to argue that firms survive technology shifts when middle managers link new-tech teams to existing assets.The Role of Line Managers as Human Resource Agents in Fostering Organizational Change in Public ServicesThe authors propose a model of what helps and hinders line managers in public services as they take on HR duties, concluding they need adequate support to do it well.A Systemic Approach to Career Development at McDonald's. McDonald's USA let a representative group of its own middle managers design changes to their career paths, with top leaders sponsoring; the authors report 3,000 middle managers embraced it.
Mixed 23 studies
From Support to Mutiny: Shifting Legitimacy Judgments and Emotional Reactions Impacting the Implementation of Radical ChangeOver three years of a radical change, middle managers went from supporting their top leaders to mutiny as they reassessed whether those leaders were legitimate, and their emotional reactions fed rising resistance.How middle managers' group‐focus emotions and social identities influence strategy implementationIn a three-year case at a large tech firm, executives treating strategy as a purely task-focused job unintentionally stirred middle managers' group identities around tenure and language; the resulting emotions saw managers, even ones executives promoted, back or quietly brush off an initiative.Working at the boundaries: Middle managerial work as a source of emancipation and alienationMiddle managers at a Brazilian accounting firm saw themselves as proactive, reflective agents yet also as lacking autonomy and belonging, and routinely shifted between active mediators and mere coordination devices.Firm Bosses or Helpful Neighbours? The Ambiguity and Co‐Construction of MNE Regional Management MandatesAt Unilever, regional mandates given to subsidiaries proved ambiguous; several units negotiated what they meant and reshaped their scope over time, with boundary-spanning middle managers doing the most intense sensemaking.Rethinking ‘Top‐Down’ and ‘Bottom‐Up’ Roles of Top and Middle Managers in Organizational Change: Implications for Employee SupportEmployees backed change most when middle managers started it and top managers carried it out; change started at the top drew no more than average support.HR Practices and Knowledge Brokering by Hybrid Middle Managers in Hospital Settings: The Influence of Professional HierarchyIn hospital care for older people, nurse middle managers could pass knowledge down to fellow nurses but struggled to pass it up the hierarchy or across to doctors; without HR support, the authors warn, a 'broken' rather than 'broker' chain may result.The Conjoint Influence of Top and Middle Management Characteristics on Management InnovationAcross 33 organizations from 2000 to 2008, the tie between an operations-oriented top team and management innovation was stronger when top and middle managers had similar professional backgrounds; age and gender similarity showed more complex patterns.The Trojan horse mechanism and reciprocal sense-giving to urgent strategic changeIn a European merger, executives won fast buy-in by getting trusted old-guard insiders to vouch for the change, at the risk of resentment later.Performance impact of middle managers' adaptive strategy implementation: The role of social capitalMiddle managers' influence on those above them related to unit performance along a curve rather than a straight line, and it paid off more for managers with a strong reputation in their networks.Leading change in public organisations: the role of mediatorsIn an Italian court house modernisation, middle-manager 'mediators' translated leaders' ideas in three distinct ways, and the approaches differed in how well they turned those ideas into everyday work.Innovation for Inclusive Business: Intrapreneurial Bricolage in Multinational CorporationsIn two multinationals, middle managers trying to build business models for poor markets worked around short-term profit pressure and unit-based incentives by creatively bundling scarce resources from inside and outside, which the authors call intrapreneurial bricolage.Testing alternate predictions for the performance consequences of middle managers' discretionAcross European R&D units, middle managers who felt freer to manage their own people tended to run better-performing units, though the link depended on the managers' experience and was limited by unit size.Exploring archetypal change: the importance of leadership and its substitutesAt a small manufacturer, most of a transformation happened after its champion CEO left and an unsupportive former CEO returned, with supervisors, staff and new systems filling the leadership gap.The Politics of Middle Management Sensemaking and SensegivingIn an insurance company's change effort, middle managers used their business expertise and political moves to steer how even their bosses understood the change.Operating Room: Relational Spaces and Microinstitutional Change in SurgeryIn two hospitals answering new regulation, top managers backed new programs, but using them could require junior staff to challenge middle managers with opposing interests; change hinged on spaces where reform-minded middle managers and staff could band together.Role Expectations and Middle Manager Strategic AgencyDrawing on 262 interviews, Mantere argues the same role expectations can both free and limit middle managers' strategic action, depending on enabling conditions he identifies for each of four strategic roles.Comments on ‘Mastering strategic renewal: Mobilising renewal journeys in multi-unit firms’, Henk W. Volberda, Charles Baden-Fuller, Frans A.J. van den Bosch. Long Range Planning, Volume 34, Issue 2, April 2001, Pages 159–178Revisiting his earlier work with colleagues, Volberda argues that big firms can renew through four kinds of journeys, emergent, directed, facilitated or transformational, each giving top, middle and front-line managers different roles.Do vertical and shared leadership need each other in change management?At an Italian power utility's change program, top-down direction and a middle-manager change team's shared leadership worked together in every phase, with the balance between them shifting as the project's needs changed.Organizational Ambidexterity and the Hybrid Middle Manager: The Case of Patient Safety in UK HospitalsIn UK hospitals, clinician-managers balanced proven safety routines with new practice when they had professional legitimacy, strong networks and a broad view of their professional role.Middle Managers’ Strategic Role in the Corporate Entrepreneurial Process: Attention-Based EffectsThe authors propose that middle managers mostly pass upward the new ideas that fit the firm's current strategic focus, and can time their pitches to win top management's attention or even reshape it.The Competing Roles of Middle Management: Negotiated Order In the Context of ChangeThe authors propose negotiated order as a lens on middle managers juggling competing roles during change, urging study of how they negotiate new ways of working, within themselves, and over how far they can legitimately push.The Role of Middle Management in the Strategy Process: Group Affiliation, Structural Holes, and Tertius IungensThe authors argue that middle managers broker between groups in eight different ways, each serving different strategic goals, and that bridging gaps between unconnected people is not always the smart move.The Middle Management Perspective on Strategy Process: Contributions, Synthesis, and Future ResearchA review of 25 years of strategy research on middle managers organizes a scattered literature into key constructs, relationships and contributions, and charts directions for future work.
Challenges 3 studies
Middle Managers and Corruptive Routine Translation: The Social Production of Deceptive PerformanceFacing performance obstacles in a telecom desk-sales unit, middle managers coerced their reps into deceiving upper management, so the unit's reported results were not real.Managing the Risks of Proactivity: A Multilevel Study of Initiative and Performance in the Middle Management ContextAmong 383 middle managers in a multinational, the tie between a tendency to take initiative and job performance was weaker for risk-takers, a gap that widened with high autonomy and narrowed in units with strong performance management.Politics of place: The meaningfulness of resisting placesIn two cases, middle managers took over and reshaped particular physical places, and the meaning they gave those places helped them build resistance to management policies and decisions.