Tarakci et al. (2023), Journal of Management Studies

Heroes or Villains? Recasting Middle Management Roles, Processes, and Behaviours

Name: Atlas of the Middle summary and grade: Tarakci et al. (2023)
Item: Heroes or Villains? Recasting Middle Management Roles, Processes, and Behaviours
Rating: 1

An introduction that reviews middle management research and organizes it around roles, coordination processes and agentic behaviours, noting how new ways of organizing and technology are reshaping each.

Parts of the Loop it informs

Not tied to one part of the Loop. It describes the middle more broadly.

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Summary written by Unfrozen from the full paper, then checked twice against the source. Loop coding is exploratory and provisional until an independent human coder checks it. Spot an error? Email [email protected] and it gets fixed.

Related studies

Zhang (2023)Expectations of managers shifted toward collaboration and away from supervision, especially in innovation-focused firms, and firms treating managers as collaborators had a larger share of middle managers.Azambuja & Islam (2023)Middle managers deviated from norms when organizational rules clashed with on-the-ground work; their deviance could adapt or replace norms and fed into new norm formation while expanding their own power.Gong et al. (2023)A CEO's passion for developing the company was linked to middle managers showing more transformational leadership, which in turn was linked to frontline employees' creativity.Letierce et al. (2023)Middle managers freed from administrative work and backed by structure and top management adapted the prescribed strategy to local conditions and empowered their front-line teams.