Category Archives: Original Article

Selecting Innovation Projects: Do Middle and Senior Managers Differ When It Comes to Radical Innovation?

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Abstract

Drawing on the attention-based view, we theorize about the differences in middle and senior managers' choices to pursue innovation projects. We test our hypotheses in an experimental study examining the decision-making processes of 180 senior and middle managers in selecting, or not, 2880 innovation projects. We find that managers differ in how they select innovation projects in general, and this difference becomes even more salient when such selections involve radical innovation. Specifically, when considering a radical innovation project, middle managers place more value on innovation characteristics required to complete the project, such as social capital and internal knowledge resources. In comparison, senior managers are concerned only with external knowledge resources, which can benefit radical innovation. Our study highlights the need to understand the role of middle managers, who frequently lead the implementation of innovation projects, and provides a theoretical underpinning for the differences in middle and senior managers' decision-making.

Kiss‐Up‐Kick‐Down to Get Ahead: A Resource Perspective on How, When, Why, and With Whom Middle Managers Use Ingratiatory and Exploitative Behaviours to Advance Their Careers

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Abstract

There are myriad organizational anecdotes about middle managers who advance their careers by ingratiating themselves with their superiors while exploiting and abusing their subordinates. We formally define this behavioural combination as the Kiss-Up-Kick-Down (KUKD) phenomenon and develop a resource-focused framework that not only explains when middle managers will engage in KUKD, but also how such behaviour helps their career progression via three resource-related pathways: One path involving sponsorship resource gains from superiors, another path involving productive resource gains from subordinates, and an intra-individual path related to middle managers' own psychological resources. Staying within the resource framework, we theorize that superiors and subordinates become likely targets of KUKD when the former is resource-poor and the latter is resource-rich. Finally, we deliberate on the role of time as a crucial boundary condition: not only in terms of when middle managers engage in KUKD behaviours, but also how such actions involve diminishing returns.

Walling in and Walling out: Middle Managers’ Boundary Work

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Abstract

Literature around middle management has highlighted the importance of intra-organizational boundaries, focusing on the in-betweenness and fluidity of middle-managerial roles and practices. Yet, this literature has largely focused on the crossing of largely stable, monolithic boundaries, placing less emphasis on the plurality of emerging boundaries and the ways in which they are constructed. Focusing on boundaries as the outcomes of, rather than only as constraints upon, everyday practices, we conduct an ethnographic study across multiple sites of a Brazilian audit firm, examining middle managers' construction, maintenance and adjustment of boundaries. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldnotes and 155 formal interviews, our study reveals how middle managers fluidly manipulate boundaries' visibility and permeability to achieve specific purposes, and how different configurations of these elements generate various boundary work practices, which we describe as barricade, façade, taboo and phantom boundary work. Moreover, we show the dual orientation of middle managers' boundary work – both obstructing and facilitating boundary-crossing – demonstrating that, in contrast to prior research, both orientations can be enacted by the same actor according to his or her purposes. By doing so, we contribute to scholarship exploring agency and plasticity as the key issues linking the existing literature on middle management with that on boundary work.

An Integrative Model of the Role of Structural, Behavioural, and Cognitive Coordination in Intergroup Effectiveness: How Middle Managers Play a Role

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Abstract

Coordinating interdependent teams' effective performance of joint tasks presents serious challenges to organizations and their middle managers. But an integrative theoretical understanding of how to coordinate such intergroup effectiveness and what role middle managers play is missing. Consolidating three separate literatures, we develop an integrative framework of the role of and interactions between structural, behavioural, and cognitive coordination in intergroup effectiveness. We propose that behavioural coordination through middle manager boundary spanning and cognitive coordination through intergroup strategic consensus (shared understanding of strategy between teams) can substitute for structural coordination (i.e., when teams do not share division membership). Moreover, we hypothesize that behavioural coordination and cognitive coordination strengthen each other in improving intergroup effectiveness. Multisource data on 188 intergroup dyads support our predictions. Our integrative framework elucidates how these coordination mechanisms combine in driving intergroup effectiveness and suggests that middle managers and their boundary spanning have a critical role in modern team-based organizations.

Middle Managers’ Struggle Over Their Subject Position in Open Strategy Processes

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Abstract 

In this paper we examine middle managers’ struggle over their subject position as strategists in the context of participative strategy processes. Based on a longitudinal case study of a company undertaking an Open Strategy process, we show how the wider inclusion of front-line employees in developing new strategy undermines the traditional subject position of middle managers. Based on these findings, we develop a process model depicting the recursive dynamics of middle managers’ struggles to maintain their subject positions in the face of employee participation. With these findings we contribute to the literature on middle managers by advancing our understanding of the implications of employee participation for middle managers’ subject position as strategists and their different ways of reclaiming their subject position. We also contribute to the literature on Open Strategy by revealing the implications for traditional strategy actors as well as by explaining the processual dynamics of participation over time.

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

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Abstract

Middle management ranks are once again being questioned by scholars and practitioners alike. This introduction to the special issue represents a timely reference point for consolidating, reviving, and guiding the next wave of researchers seeking to engage this debate. We review the foundations and recent advances in middle management research and develop an organizing framework in terms of middle management's organizational roles, coordination processes, and agentic behaviours. We also identify how new ways of organizing, technology, and middle manager needs are changing to shape each of these themes. The collection of works we synthesize in this introduction offer theoretical advances and empirical evidence on how these changes affect middle management roles, processes, and behaviours. We conclude by mapping out promising research avenues for future research in middle management.

Achieving Product Ambidexterity in New Product Development: The Role of Middle Managers’ Dynamic Managerial Capabilities

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Abstract

While the concept of dynamic managerial capabilities was initially developed to understand top managers' strategic decisions, we theorize that it can explain how middle managers successfully contribute to functional outcomes. In this paper, we apply the dynamic managerial capabilities perspective and theorize that middle managers' capabilities to sense, seize, and reconfigure opportunities and assets, enhance product ambidexterity. We test our predictions with survey data obtained in two waves with a three-year time lag and enriched with archival data from a sample of 185 German middle managers. Our results show that middle managers' general human capital (specialized education), structural social capital (managerial ties), and relational social capital (trust) are positively related to product ambidexterity, while their cognitive social capital (solidarity) is negatively related. We contribute by expanding the concept of dynamic managerial capabilities to middle management and provide insights into the underexplored relationship between middle managers' capabilities and functional product ambidexterity.

Disclosure of strategic collaborative agreements and the cost of equity capital

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Abstract

How corporate strategic disclosure affects investor evaluations is a crucial and widely discussed question. Although prior literature has spent efforts analyzing the information effect of strategic alliances on investor reactions, whether this effect can extend to the cost of equity capital still needs to be explored. Using data from China's A-share listed firms from 2007 to 2021, we examine the impact of disclosing strategic collaborative agreements on equity capital costs. We find that disclosing strategic collaborative agreements relates to lower equity capital costs. These results hold after several robustness checks. The mechanism test reveals that announcing strategic collaborative agreements alleviates equity capital costs mainly through the information effect. Moreover, this effect is more salient in firms with lower agency costs, lower media coverage, positive media sentiment, and higher media quality. These findings suggest that strategic collaborative agreements provide investors with valuable information.

Regulating the banking sector to support credit access: Evidence from small business

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Abstract

This study investigated the effectiveness of regulatory interventions in mitigating the harmful effects of financial crises on small firms. We examine the impact of a support factor implemented by European policymakers on Italian micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) between 2007 and 2017. The analysis uses a difference-in-differences approach to assess the credit conditions of these firms. Contrary to expectations, our results show that MSMEs in Italy continue to face credit constraints even after the introduction of the support factor. In contrast, we find that structural factors and portfolio effects play a more important role in promoting favorable credit conditions for small firms. Our results highlight the importance of considering these factors in conjunction with regulatory interventions to achieve better outcomes. This study has implications for policymakers and stakeholders, particularly in assessing the appropriateness of extending support factors for different policy purposes.

Does the famine experience of board chair hamper innovation?

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Abstract

This study examines whether and how the famine experiences of board chairs influence the innovation of their firms. Results using a sample comprising 8882 firm-year observations from Chinese firms during the period 2003 to 2017 reveal that the board chair's famine experience has a negative effect on innovation. This negative effect is strengthened by famine intensity and high uncertainty. The obtained results are robust to alternative measures, endogeneity issues, omitted variables, and sample selection bias. Additional analyses showed that the relationship between board chair's famine experience and innovation is mediated by cash holdings and R&D investment. The overall results contribute to imprinting theory by explaining that early-life famine experiences of board chairs create survival threat imprints among them, eventually affecting their later-life behaviors. The findings also provide implications by highlighting how the early-life traumatic experiences of executives adversely influence their firms outcomes.