ABSTRACT
What roles do managers, and especially middle managers, play in processes of innovation and organizational change? Are they agents of change or simply its targets? These questions have often been answered negatively. As the intermediary ‘linking pins’ at the operational core of organizational hierarchies, middle managers are in a position to block change, both from above and from below (Likert, 1961). There is an extensive literature that has documented how middle managers can obstruct information flows, impede decision-making, over-manage subordinates and create unnecessary duplication of tasks and specialist functions (Argyris, 1990). Moreover, their role as guardians of administrative efficiency and functional expertise in large bureaucratic organizations puts them in a position to defend hierarchy and status, and ensure that procedures and processes are transformed from means into dysfunctional ends (Merton, 1968). It is no surprise, then, that middle managers have been condemned by a combination of their positional power and ‘over-conformity’ as a powerful constituency to resist change: the notorious ‘change-resistant lump in the middle’.
