Eggers (2016), Strategic Management Journal

Reversing course: Competing technologies, mistakes, and renewal in flat panel displays

After 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.

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Questions this study helps answer

What the research saysWhat do middle managers actually do during change?What the research saysHow can middle managers get ideas heard by senior leaders?

Related studies

Huy et al. (2014)Over 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.Huy (2011)In 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.Hensmans (2015)In 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.Alfoldi et al. (2017)At 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.