Middle managers and organizational renewal - organizational conditions for agility in innovation work

Important results from the project

The project has resulted in insights into the middle manager´s role under agile working methods. Our endeavor has been to identify and formulate competencies that are independent of the position of the middle management role in a formal, hierarchical structure. We observe that a middle manager´s work involves creating and maintaining what we call ´local coherence´, which requires continuous adaptation of the individual´s approach, something we call ´self-modelling´. The pursuit of local coherence and self-modeling seems central to the middle manager´s work in an agile context.

Expected long term effects

The studies resulted in a licentiate thesis, four conference articles, a pop-science article and three manuscripts under preparation for publication. The effects of the lessons are manifold. The change of the middle management role towards a more personnel-oriented one should in the long run have consequences for recruitment and career paths. The insights into the middle manager´s work with local coherence and self-modeling could in practice mean a new legitimacy for the middle manager which is less dependent on the hierarchy, and a greater task awareness of the middle manager.

Approach and implementation

The project has carried out two case studies of changes in the middle management role during agile transformations. The empirical data has consisted of interviews of middle managers who were in an organizational change, and exchange with the case companies via meetings and seminars. In addition to the empirical part of the project, we have studied previous research related to the role of management in less hierarchical organizations, which has resulted in a licentiate thesis that proposes a new constructive perspective on the middle manager´s role in this context.