middle manager

any manager who occupies a middle position in the HIERARCHY of an ORGANIZATION, located between those senior managers who formulate business strategy and those with direct responsibility for overseeing the work of production or of clerical employees. In practice the term is used imprecisely; it can also refer to those managers who do not contribute directly to the organization's primary output and to those who do not have direct responsibility for budgets or overseeing the work of others (see LINE AND STAFF). In recent years many organizations have sought to reduce the number of their middle managers; information technology has rendered some of their information-processing roles unnecessary, whilst many have claimed that the absence of responsibility has led to poor job performance. See MANAGEMENT.

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References in periodicals archive

Bob Torsey, another Management Training Institute senior faculty member expressed it this way, "If every middle manager dedicated him or her self to participate in more management training classes, including our new management training seminar tune-up, their careers will flourish.

Management Training Institute offers Management Training Tune up for Middle Managers

In a large organization, a middle manager might well be supervising a volunteer program manager directly assigned to that department or unit.

Middle management barrier: discover what this layer of management really thinks

Middle managers have the toughest jobs in Britain - being bullied by staff and bosses alike, says employment lawyer Jonathan Whittaker of SAS Daniels.

Fighting sickness of office bullying; EXEC MIDLANDS

This description of middle managers and their attitude toward those at the top of the organizational food chain is becoming increasingly common and pushing some companies dangerously close to a talent void and, ultimately, a massive leadership vacuum.

Stuck in the middle: companies that fail to nurture and develop their middle managers may be creating a leadership vacuum that will condemn them to failure. The fix has to start at the top

However, a U-form firm may suffer from double marginalization because the middle manager of production chooses transfer prices to maximize the production division's profit.

Market structure and organizational form

The middle manager's role is an important factor in the success of strategy implementation, and the support they receive from top managers is crucial (Guth/ MacMillan 1986).

Strategy implementation: the impact of demographic characteristics on the level of support received by middle managers

An interesting proposal is that middle manager must be specialist and generalist.

Reorienting the Role of Middle Managers for Creating Value within the Organization: an Economical, Social and Ethical Proposal/Reorientar el papel de los mandos intermedios para crear valor dentro de la organizacion: una propuesta economica, social y etica

Instead, our study suggests that job satisfaction by itself cannot predict middle manager retention when there are strong faultlines in the TMTs.

Middle manager problems

"Middle manager" is not often seen as a desirable role to have on the way up, but rather as someone likely limited in a bureaucracy, with accountability but little control, and facing an uncertain future.

Consider Middle Managers in Growth Plans

The Outstanding Middle Manager: How to Be a Healthy, Happy, High-Performing Mid-Level Manager