ABSTRACT
As outlined in Chapter 1, middle managers have long occupied a relatively unambiguous role in the literature on employee involvement and partnership. They have been viewed in the main and in simple terms as opponents of innovative approaches to work organization and joint decision-making. The classical themes in the literature concern the threats posed by involvement and partnership to middle managers’ authority and established ways of working; the tensions that arise between new decision-making processes and established accountability for the attainment of hard business objectives; and ultimately, the fear that innovation may entail or lead to delayering, the loss of promotional ladders and even of jobs. In one way or another these themes have informed nearly all studies of middle managers’ reactions to employee involvement and associated innovations in work organization and decisionmaking (for reviews see Cooke 1990: 8-9; Hyman and Mason 1995: ch. 8; Fenton-O’Creevy 1998; 2001; for an exception see Storey 1992: chs 7-8). Only recently has this view begun to be modified in significant respects. While not doubting that middle managers frequently resist employee involvement and workplace partnership in defence of sectional or self-interest, several researchers have sought to locate middle management reactions to work innovations on the wider canvas of organizational systems and processes. In this perspective, middle managers’ and supervisors’ reactions are understood to a significant degree as a reflection of the extent to which senior management supports work innovations, both directly and through multiple organizational systems for which they bear ultimate responsibility. This approach will inform our analysis of middle management attitudes in Aer Rianta, where, for much of the period from the genesis to the high tide of partnership in the late 1990s, considerable tension and at times outright conflict characterized the relationship between middle managers, their union and CP.
