Middle Manager's role in an organization

In the essence of analyzing the world’s economic affairs, globalization stands out to be one of the common change initiatives that organizations have targeted. With a clearly sound objective of economic development, organizations that take this course venture into different features such as- free flow of optimized allocation of capital, technology, information and service in the global context. Many senior managers that believe in change are no strangers to having similar beliefs that the organization’s development, progress and prosperity could only be achieved through integrating with the outside world markets. However, I strongly believe that in order for these organizations to follow their visions and objectives through, middle managers have to be involved in the decision making process too.

In an imaginative view of the role of middle managers during planned change, Higgs and Rowland (2005), opine that this type of change is complex in the sense that it covers organizational structures, financial control systems, the incentive mechanism, and the HR system. All this complexity therefore should entail top management to consider some bottom- up approaches in decision making. Similarly, McNamara (2008) views indicate that planned change occurs when leaders in the organization recognize the need for a major change and proactively organize a plan to accomplish the change, hence the need for middle management involvement.

Lewin (1951) indicate that the democratic type of leadership is generally the most effective leadership style due to the fact that not only do such leaders offer guidance to group members, but also participate in the group and allow input from other group members. This kind of view reiterates a belief to me that in order for better performance and communication, middle managers should also be deeply involved to a certain extent of decision making. Further clarification is given by Gioia and Chittipedi (1991) who indicate that the increasing separation of senior and middle managers reduces interaction between the two groups. However, such interaction is important for creating alignment in organizations. On the part of sense making and sense giving, Weick (1995) contends that while it is viewed as a significant process of organizing, sense making unfolds as a sequence in which people concerned with identity in the social context of other actors engage ongoing circumstances from which they extract cues and make plausible sense retrospectively, while enacting more or less order into those ongoing circumstances. Weick’s (1995) views indicate to me that middle managers are so important to the organization

One of the examples where middle managers are very important is in the Chinese business society. For the sake of striking a fit between the organizational and local/ national cultures, middle managers need to begin making decisions for the good of relationship building and communication. A major cultural feature that does apply to the Chinese business network is the ‘Guanxi’, or connections which strongly rely on fundamentals such as loyalty, trust, mutual dependence and favors, honesty and good reputation. Any kind of middle manager that is working in the Chinese economy would definitely require ‘Guanxi’ in order to acquire trust, good communication and cooperation. The above fundamentals may also be related to Hofsted’s (1980, 1991) cultural dimension of cultural ‘collectivism’, which is characterized by societies in which people from birth onwards are integrated into strong, cohesive in-groups, often extended families that continue to protect them in exchange of unquestioning loyalty.

Conclusively, I am in strong support of middle managers for the fact that since they are much closer to the lower employees and customers, they are personally more aware of the issues that would in the end affect the organization. Nevertheless, once that relationship between top and middle managers is lost on grounds of decision making, it may not be so easy to create good communication, effective delegation, and ‘top of the range’ leadership.

References

Gioia, D. A., and Chittipeddi, K. Sensemaking and Sense giving in Strategic Change Initiation. Strategic Management Journal, 12: 433–448, 1991

Higgs, Malcolm and Deborah Rowland. All Changes Great and Small: Exploring Approaches to Change and its Leadership. Journal of Change Management, Vol. 5, No. 2, 121-151, June 2005

Hofstede, G. Culture‘s and Organisations: Software of the Mind. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991.

Hofstede, G. Culture‘s Consequences: International Differences in Work-related Values, London: Sage Publications, 1980.

Lewin, Kurt. Field Theory in Social Sciences: Selected Theoretical Papers, 1951.

McNamara, Authenticity Consulting Charter. Toronto, 2008.

Weick, Karl E. Sense making in Organizations. Thousand Oaks California: Sage Publications, 1995.

Importance of Organizational Structures

Some of the cases that we have covered during this semester have made me think about the importance of organizational structures, as well as management systems such as the internal environment which is so important and crucial while coping with the rapidly changing external environment. One of such cases was Timah (Tin Company) which faced a crisis in 1985 that was triggered by an over-supply of tin, hence resulting in the enormous fall in the price of tin. Due to the above proceedings, PT. Timah went into debt, a scenario that led the company to undergo extensive re-structuring pressure.
When I make sense of the resulting effects, the sudden change in the structure of the industry had a drastic impact over the company to change its internal structure. As if that wasn’t enough pain, the over-stuffed, highly bureaucratic, and mechanistic organizational structure of the company disallowed taking necessary actions hence responding back to the change call immediately. I therefore explicitly assume that if the company had been less hierarchical, more flexible and in the hands of professional managers, the impact of the crisis would have been of little effect to the company. Yet despite the company’s inability to manage the crisis under new management, the company underwent large-scale re-formation movement which proved successful in the following years.
Some of the fundamental changes that had taken place were;

Rethinking hierarchy to increase responsiveness to external changes
Reducing the number of hierarchical layers
Decentralizing decision making
Shrinking headquarters staffs
Emphasizing horizontal rather than vertical communication
Shifting the emphasis of control from supervision to accountability

According to McAllister’s (2004) article titled “The 5 P’s of Change: Leading Change by Effectively Utilizing Leverage Points within an Organization”, it is argued that if the 5 P’s are used constructively, they can help organizations and their members to accept and cope with change. The author lists the 5 P’s as Pain, Process, Politics, Payoff and Persistence. In relation to the case therefore, the deduction is that PT. Timah had no intentions whatsoever to initiate a move from being over-stuffed, highly bureaucratic and mechanistic organizational structure, towards being decentralized, more organic and being a contemporary organizational structure in terms of executive management, re-focusing into long term indicators and having systematic financial reports. This did not happen not until the time PT. Timah was forced by an external change and faced with a high level of pain that left the company with no options but employing the 5 P’s and re-structuring the organization in order to survive.
In regard to these facts, the destructive changes in the structure of the industry can create constructive impacts over the companies. Yet recognizing the pain and executing the necessary change by professional hands can only lead to success. I therefore recommend a road map which is essential for the companies to turn destructive impacts of the external change into constructive pain of change. These steps will be helpful to the whole organization.

• Strategic Planning Systems
• Statement of the goals
Setting up a goal involves establishing specific, measurable and time targeted objectives Goal setting is an effective tool for making progress by ensuring that participants (both employer and the employees) are clearly aware of what is expected from them, if an objective is to be achieved.
• Specific action steps
In order to pursue the stated goals, organizations must set specific action steps. These are to stir the organization in line with the goals, moreover not to lose the track in the course of diffusing the alterations throughout the organizational body.
• Corporate Culture
• Beliefs, values, behavioral norms of the company that influence how employees think and behave
In accordance to Latham (2003), Leaders have a vital role in changing work attitudes, and instituting a strong corporate by injecting a new mind-set, values, behavioral roles and making sure that these alterations pass through the organization. In his article ‘Goal setting: A five-step Approach to Behavior Change’ stresses how leaders must model their subordinates. Similarly, McAllister (2004, 326) opines that no change will occur ‘if it is not constantly reinforced and monitored by the people at the top and then repeated throughout the management chain of command.’

References;

MCallaster, C.M. (2004) “The 5 P’s of Change. Leading Change by Effectively Utilizing Leverage Points within an Organization”. Organizational Dynamics. Vol 33, no 3, 318-328.
Gary P.Latham (2003) Goal setting: A five-step Approach to Behavior Change, Organizational Dynamic, Vol.32, No.3, pp.309-318

Ancok, Djamaludin (2008) Restructuring of PT Timah. Case study, prepared for JIBS seminar on organizing and leading change.