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.