Part 1 of the Unfrozen Loop
Surface both ways
Bad news and good ideas move up as easily as plans move down.
Change runs on information. When problems with a change can't travel up, and leaders' intentions don't travel down intact, the people in the middle end up managing a change nobody above them can see clearly.
23studies inform this part
18 support · 5 mixed · 0 challenge · 2 rated high strength
Questions about this part
Supports 18 studies
Distributed Attention and Shared Emotions in the Innovation ProcessAt Nokia, fearful middle managers shared less bad news upward while top managers did not fully reveal how serious the outside threat was; leaders grew overly optimistic and the smartphone effort suffered.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.Performance feedback and middle managers’ divergent strategic behavior: The roles of social comparisons and organizational identificationIn a Fortune 500 firm, middle managers' searching for and championing of new strategic initiatives was tied more to how they compared with peers and other units than to how they compared with their own past results.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.How Does Executive Strategic Human Resource Management Link to Organizational Ambidexterity? An Empirical Examination of Manufacturing Firms in ChinaIn a survey of 144 Chinese manufacturers, a teamwork-oriented HR system for executives was linked to firms better balancing new and existing business, partly through a more effective top team, and more so where middle managers shared more knowledge upward.I will speak up if my voice is socially desirable: A moderated mediating process of promotive versus prohibitive voice.Among 66 middle managers and 262 of their staff in five high-tech firms, employees who valued power distance felt less able to offer improvement ideas, a link that weakened when their boss delegated more.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.From Patient Surveys to Organizational Change: Rational Change Processes and Institutional ForcesAcross 100 Danish hospital wards, patient surveys tended to change practice when key professionals trusted the survey's quality, the ward scored worse than others, and the fix was obvious.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.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.Uncertainty during Organizational Change: Managing Perceptions through CommunicationInterviewed employees preferred supervisors for practical change information and saw senior leaders as the source of strategy; in a government department facing restructure, those rating change communication highly were more open to change, partly through feeling less uncertain.An emergent understanding of influences on managers’ voices in SMEsIn a survey of 202 SME middle managers, bosses' openness to ideas went with higher job satisfaction and engagement, but only engagement was tied to speaking up more.Get the Boss to Buy In.Ashford and Detert advise middle managers selling an idea upward to time it well, manage emotions, and frame it in the executives' terms.Trust in change managers: the role of affectInterviews with 24 people about workplace change found that trust and distrust in supervisors and senior change leaders came loaded with emotion, distrust most intensely, and that perceived fairness built or eroded that trust.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.Experiencing Rare and Unusual Events Richly: The Role of Middle Managers in Animating and Guiding Organizational InterpretationThe authors propose that middle managers, caught between top and front-line views, can help organizations learn from rare events by first stirring up differing interpretations and later blending them into a richer shared read.I am not your hero: change management and culture shocks in a public sector corporationIn a telecom takeover, senior leaders who left out middle managers' voices ran into trouble implementing change; the authors argue resistance can be a check on over-optimistic plans.Managerial (In)attention to Competitive ThreatsThis theory paper proposes why middle managers' warnings about emerging rivals can go unheeded: different positions in the firm trigger different motivational focus, which tilts what top managers pay attention to.
Mixed 5 studies
Corporate hierarchy and vertical information flow inside the firm—a behavioral viewTaller hierarchies pulled middle managers two ways, toward sending more suggestions upward to avoid costly omissions and toward holding back out of fear of judgment; field data and experiments found both forces, each winning under different conditions.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.Managing Organizational Change: Negotiating Meaning and Power-Resistance RelationsIn a telecom company's culture-change workshop, senior and middle managers negotiated meaning in two very different patterns, set by how they talked to each other, which the authors relate to generative dialogue and to power and resistance.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.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.