Huy (2011), Strategic Management Journal

How middle managers' group‐focus emotions and social identities influence strategy implementation

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.

Parts of the Loop it informs

Surface both waysSupports Make sense togetherSupports Start it close to the workMixed The middle's own weatherSupports

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Questions this study helps answer

What the research saysWhy do middle managers resist change?What the research saysHow can leaders tell a change is stuck before the numbers show it?

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.Raes et al. (2011)The 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.Vuori & Huy (2016)At 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.Raelin & Cataldo (2011)At 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.