Methods and data / Research note
The missing middle: how often management research mentions middle managers
A keyword count of journal abstracts from 2007 to 2026. Abstracts that name top executives far outnumber abstracts that name the managers in the middle, and the gap is still wide in the most recent years.
By Gabriel Lopez · Unfrozen Research Index, snapshot of 12 October 2026, English-language abstracts · Published 29 October 2026
Key findings
- The headline. In 21 core management journals from 2007 to 2018, abstracts that mention top executives outnumber abstracts that mention middle managers 695 to 66, by keyword: about 11 to 1.
- Keywords miss papers, and the gap holds anyway. A recall audit of 520 sampled abstracts (511 once the Spanish-language ones are left out) found that keyword searches miss papers in both groups. Corrected for that, the 2007 to 2018 gap is about 10 to 1, with a plausible range of roughly 6 to 15. The correction is provisional until a human coder checks it.
- It has not closed. In the same 21 journals from 2019 to 2026 (2026 to date), the count is 481 to 49, or 9.8 to 1. In every year from 2007 to 2026, executives appear in 36 to 100 abstracts and middle managers in 2 to 9.
- It varies a lot by journal. In Harvard Business Review, 71 abstracts mention executives and 1 mentions middle managers (2007 to 2018, mostly from 2013 to 2016; see the note under the table). The journals with the smallest gaps in that window were Journal of Applied Psychology (12 to 5) and Human Relations (17 to 7), followed by Journal of Organizational Change Management (40 to 10), which ties at 4 to 1 with two journals that have far fewer mentions.
- Wider net, same direction. Across all 28 journals with OpenAlex abstracts (21 core, 7 expansion), 2007 to 2026 (2026 to date), 1,543 abstracts mention executives and 194 mention middle managers, by keyword.
Year by year
Abstracts in 21 core management journals that mention top executives (above the line) or middle managers (below it), by keyword, 2007 to 2026 (2026 to date). Totals: 1,176 executive and 115 middle-manager abstracts. Download the yearly counts (CSV).
Journal by journal, 2007 to 2018
The 21 core journals in the headline window, 2007 to 2018, counted by keyword. "Abstracts" is how many English-language abstracts OpenAlex supplies for that journal and window, which is the base each count comes from.
| Journal | Abstracts | Executives | Middle managers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strategic Management Journal | 1,251 | 183 | 11 |
| Academy of Management Journal | 926 | 90 | 4 |
| Journal of Management | 917 | 71 | 5 |
| Harvard Business Review | 430 | 71 | 1 |
| Journal of Management Studies | 727 | 60 | 11 |
| Organization Science | 960 | 45 | 5 |
| Journal of Organizational Change Management | 664 | 40 | 10 |
| Administrative Science Quarterly | 272 | 25 | 3 |
| Academy of Management Perspectives | 357 | 23 | 0 |
| Human Relations | 879 | 17 | 7 |
| California Management Review | 340 | 16 | 0 |
| Journal of Applied Psychology | 1,192 | 12 | 5 |
| Academy of Management Review | 475 | 12 | 1 |
| Journal of Management Inquiry | 481 | 11 | 0 |
| The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science | 244 | 8 | 2 |
| American Journal of Sociology | 435 | 4 | 1 |
| American Sociological Review | 542 | 4 | 0 |
| MIT Sloan Management Review * | 37 | 2 | 0 |
| Organizational Dynamics * | 7 | 1 | 0 |
| Organization Development Journal * | 7 | 0 | 0 |
| Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes * | 15 | 0 | 0 |
| Total | 11,158 | 695 | 66 |
* Fewer than 50 abstracts in OpenAlex for this window (MIT Sloan Management Review, Organization Development Journal, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Organizational Dynamics), so these counts say little about the journal. Harvard Business Review publishes practitioner articles rather than research papers, and for 2007 to 2011 most of its OpenAlex abstracts come from its Spanish-language edition, which is left out, so 391 of its 430 abstracts here come from 2013 to 2016. Treat it as a rough signal. Download the per-journal counts (CSV).
All 28 journals, 2007 to 2026, by keyword
| Journal | Abstracts | Executives | Middle managers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strategic Management Journal | 2,009 | 294 | 14 |
| Journal of Management | 1,548 | 147 | 6 |
| Journal of Management Studies | 1,501 | 135 | 28 |
| Academy of Management Journal | 1,390 | 130 | 6 |
| British Journal of Management expansion | 1,262 | 108 | 13 |
| Organization Science | 1,709 | 92 | 6 |
| Human Resource Management expansion | 1,035 | 84 | 13 |
| Leadership & Organization Development Journal expansion | 1,173 | 73 | 26 |
| Journal of Organizational Change Management | 1,220 | 72 | 22 |
| Harvard Business Review | 432 | 71 | 1 |
| Organization Studies expansion | 1,410 | 37 | 11 |
| Long Range Planning expansion | 198 | 36 | 3 |
| Academy of Management Perspectives | 575 | 35 | 1 |
| Human Relations | 1,358 | 32 | 9 |
| Administrative Science Quarterly | 457 | 30 | 3 |
| Journal of Applied Psychology | 1,939 | 29 | 7 |
| Journal of Management Inquiry | 705 | 24 | 1 |
| California Management Review | 557 | 22 | 0 |
| Academy of Management Review | 755 | 21 | 1 |
| The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science | 490 | 17 | 5 |
| Journal of Change Management expansion | 412 | 16 | 13 |
| The Leadership Quarterly expansion | 85 | 13 | 0 |
| Organizational Dynamics | 92 | 7 | 2 |
| MIT Sloan Management Review | 148 | 7 | 1 |
| American Sociological Review | 840 | 5 | 0 |
| American Journal of Sociology | 648 | 4 | 2 |
| Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes | 99 | 2 | 0 |
| Organization Development Journal * | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| Total | 24,057 | 1,543 | 194 |
Keyword counts of English-language abstracts. * Fewer than 50 abstracts in OpenAlex for this window, so its counts say little about the journal. 2026 is a partial year (to 12 October). The 7 expansion journals were added later to widen the search; they are not part of the headline count.
What this does and does not show
This is a count of attention, not a measure of importance. It does not say that nobody studies middle managers: a dedicated research stream exists, and Version 1 of the Atlas of the Middle mapped 117 of those studies, 74 of them about change (173 as of 30 October 2026). What the count shows is narrower. In these journals, the top of the organization is named far more often than the middle, and that is still true in the most recent years.
My reading: if abstracts in these journals name managers in the middle this rarely, then advice written for them likely has less research to draw on than advice written for executives. That is an inference from the counts, not something the counts prove.
How the count was made
- Source. The Unfrozen Research Index: 34,976 research articles and reviews from 29 journals, 2007 to 2026 (2026 to date). The snapshot used here is dated 12 October 2026.
- Counting set. Counts use the abstracts that OpenAlex supplies, which cover 28 of the 29 journals (21 core, 7 expansion); OD Practitioner comes only from a doctoral research file and has no OpenAlex abstracts. Using one abstract source keeps every year comparable. Counts that compare executives and middle managers use the 24,057 English-language abstracts among them.
- Executive mention. The title or abstract matches
\bceos?\b | chief executive | top management | top managers | upper echelons? | top management teams? | \btmts?\b | senior executives? | senior leaders? | board of directors | corporate executives?(case-insensitive). - Middle-manager mention. The title or abstract matches
middle[- ](level )?manag | mid[- ]level manag | middle management(case-insensitive). A paper can count as both. - Years. OpenAlex publication year. 2007 to 2018 is the headline window; 2019 to 2026 is the later window.
Limits
- Keywords miss papers that describe managers in other words, and catch some that only mention a term in passing. The recall audit above estimates the effect; its coding has not yet been checked by an independent human coder.
- Abstracts are short. A full paper may discuss middle managers that its abstract never names.
- OpenAlex supplies abstracts unevenly. Some journals have few in this window, so their rows are flagged and should not be compared with the others.
- OpenAlex dates some papers from 1994 and 1996 special issues of the Strategic Management Journal as 2007. Removing them lowers the headline by 2 executive and 1 middle-manager mention; the ratio stays about 11 to 1. The fix goes into the next cleaning pass.
- Correction, 29 October 2026. The first version of this count, 786 to 66, included 405 abstracts from the Spanish-language edition of Harvard Business Review (2007 to 2011, plus one from 2016). The English search terms matched them almost entirely through the word "CEO", which Spanish uses too (90 of the 91 matching abstracts; the other matched only the English company name "Corporate Executive Board"), and never through a middle-manager term, so they inflated the executive side by 91. They are now left out of every comparison, along with 1 abstract in Persian.
- The index keeps growing. Counts on this page are pinned to the 12 October 2026 snapshot; a later snapshot can differ slightly.
Download and cite
You can reuse the counts and the chart with a citation, under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. The files contain counts only; abstracts obtained under library or API terms are not republished.
Lopez, G. (2026). The missing middle: How often management research mentions middle managers, 2007 to 2026 (Unfrozen Research Index, snapshot of 12 October 2026). Unfrozen. https://unfreeze.us/research/missing-middle/
Found a mistake? Email [email protected]. Corrections are made and noted.
Questions
How often does management research mention middle managers?
In 21 core management journals from 2007 to 2018, abstracts that mention top executives outnumber abstracts that mention middle managers 695 to 66, by keyword, about 11 to 1. Across all 28 journals with OpenAlex abstracts, 2007 to 2026 (2026 to date), the keyword count is 1,543 to 194.
Has the gap closed since 2018?
Not much. In the same 21 core journals from 2019 to 2026 (2026 to date), the keyword count is 481 to 49, or 9.8 to 1. In no year from 2007 to 2026 did more than 9 abstracts in these journals mention middle managers.
Does this mean researchers ignore middle managers?
No. It is a count of attention, not a judgment of importance, and a dedicated research stream on middle managers exists. Version 1 of the Atlas of the Middle on this site mapped 117 of those studies (173 as of 30 October 2026). The count says that, in these journals, the top of the organization is named far more often than the middle.
Can I use these numbers?
Yes, with a citation. The yearly and per-journal counts are free to download as CSV files on this page. Please cite the snapshot date, because the index keeps growing and later counts can differ.
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