Part 5 of the Unfrozen Loop · candidate
The middle's own weather
Workload, competing initiatives and strain on the managers carrying the change.
Every other part of the Loop runs through people who are already stretched. These studies describe the pressure on middle managers during change: the load, the conflicting demands, the emotional work. A candidate fifth part of the Loop.
26studies inform this part
26 support · 0 mixed · 0 challenge · 3 rated high strength
Questions about this part
Supports 26 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.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.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.When Can Humble Top Executives Retain Middle Managers? The Moderating Role of Top Management Team FaultlinesAcross 43 top teams, humble executives' link to satisfied middle managers was weaker when the top team was split by faultlines, and those faultlines also blunted how much dissatisfaction pushed managers to quit.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.‘My Brilliant Career’? New Organizational Forms and Changing Managerial Careers in Japan, the UK, and USAInterviews with HR managers in large firms in Japan, the UK and the USA found most had downsized and delayered, promotions were scarcer and sideways moves more common, and middle managers were generally resentful.Pursuit of Whose Happiness? Executive Leaders' Transformational Behaviors and Personal ValuesIn Chinese firms, middle managers picked up on their CEO's personal values, and a CEO's inspiring behavior went with stronger commitment when the CEO cared about others and weaker commitment when the CEO was self-focused.Human resources management and firm performance: The differential role of managerial affective and continuance commitment.In 463 firms operating in China, HR practices aimed at middle managers' performance went with better firm results, a link running through managers' emotional attachment to the firm; practices aimed at keeping them did not.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.Organizational Change and Managerial Sensemaking: Working Through ParadoxAt Lego, middle managers charged with carrying out a major restructuring struggled for meaning; reflecting jointly with researchers brought their dilemmas into view as paradoxes, and the authors set out a process for working through them.How do I trust thee? The employee‐organization relationship, supervisory support, and middle manager trust in the organizationAmong 545 middle managers in China, support from their own boss was more strongly tied to trusting the organization than the employment deal was, strengthening trust's link to investment-style deals and weakening the negative link to purely transactional ones.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.Identity regulation, identity work and phronesisAt Disneyland, middle managers pushed back on a company script that put effectiveness ahead of ethics, recasting themselves as seekers of practical wisdom.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.‘It Sends a Cold Shiver down my Spine’: Ghostly Interruptions to Strategy ImplementationIn conversations at a Danish local government's strategy seminar, middle managers glimpsed darker futures behind the familiar strategy and voiced a sense that something different had to be done, though they could not say what.Who is ‘the middle manager’?Listening to middle managers talk about their work in focus groups, the authors argue they shift between going along with and pushing back on the standard manager role, both controlled and controlling.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 Effect of External Executive Coaching and Coaching- Based Leadership on Need Satisfaction.Over a year at a Fortune 500 high-tech firm, executives given outside coaching showed more satisfied needs at work, middle managers in a coaching-based leadership program seemingly did too, and gains were bigger for the executives.Changing Leadership and Gender in Public Sector OrganizationsMostly drawing on the literature, plus some findings from Swedish and English higher education and social work, the authors argue new public management goes with masculinist rationality that rewards individual winners and diverts attention from collective gender issues.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.Barriers to the executive suite: evidence from IrelandInterviews with 30 women middle managers in Ireland found many felt pressured to stay put rather than seek promotion as career demands collided with family life, and they saw visibility as key to advancing.Explaining employment relationships with social exchange and job embeddedness.In two surveys of Chinese managers, including 526 middle managers in 41 firms, generous employer investment in staff was linked to lower quit intentions and more commitment, through a sense of exchange and feeling rooted in the job.Inside Out? Organizational Membership, Ambiguity and the Ambivalent Identity of the Internal ConsultantInterviews with HR and organizational development managers working as internal consultants suggest they build an in-between identity, part insider and part outsider, that can be a source of strength as well as strain.Employee perceptions of organizational change: impact of hierarchical levelIn a hospital facing downsizing and a move, executives talked about participation and communication while supervisors talked about conflict and division.