Who is ‘the middle manager’?

Abstract

Middle managers occupy a central position in organizational hierarchies, where they are responsible for implementing senior management plans by ensuring junior staff fulfil their roles. However, explorations of the identity of the middle manager offer contradictory insights. This paper develops a theory of the identity of the middle manager using a theoretical framework offered by the philosopher Judith Butler and empirical material from focus groups of middle managers discussing their work. We use personal pronoun analysis to analyse the identity work they undertake while talking between themselves. We suggest that middle managers move between contradictory subject positions that both conform with and resist normative managerial identities, and we also illuminate how those moves are invoked. The theory we offer is that middle managers are both controlled and controllers, and resisted and resisters. We conclude that rather than being slotted into organizational hierarchies middle managers constitute those hierarchies.

The Impact of Emotionally Important Social Identities on the Construction of a Managerial Leader Identity: A Challenge for Nurses in the English National Health Service

“…Our findings that nurse managers said they were only able to resolve issues of identity conflict and emotional distress when they were emotionally detached from the professional group offers insight into the ongoing identity struggles faced by middle managers (Harding et al, 2014;Thomas and Linstead, 2002). However, whether middle managers will feel able to engage in this type of identity work remains to be seen.…”

“…Middle managers, for example, are noted as a group of individuals who regularly experience identity conflict, arising from fragile identity constructions, and negative emotional experiences when transitioning towards managerially defined leader identities (Harding et al, 2014;Thomas and Linstead, 2002;Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003).…”

“…Middle managers are noted as a group whose structural position exposes them to identity conflict (Harding et al, 2014;Thomas and Linstead, 2002;Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003), as they occupy a role requiring the construction of a desired group identity alongside a desired leader identity (Tee et al, 2013). Considering the experiences of nurses moving into middle management adds a further dimension of complexity, as the desired group identity is associated with subordination, rather than leadership (Abbott, 1988;Allen, 1997).…”

Critical Essay: Reconsidering critical performativity

“…Rather, they are complex subjects moving between subject positions where identity and agency is performatively constituted within and through different circulating discourses. They can espouse contradictory beliefs from within the 14 contrasting subject positions they move between, and so can be both human and inhuman (see Harding et al, 2014, for a discussion of subject positions). Thus a political theory of performativity needs to understand and then change the terms within and through which subjects constitute identities within organizational subject positions.…”

Not lost in translation: Managerial career narratives and the construction of protean identities

“…Many business school graduates, for example, still believe in the importance of starting their careers with widely known companies to build up their professional identity and legitimacy, benefitting from the status and reputation associated with a specific organization (e.g., Bidwell et al, 2015). The myth of the bureaucratic career model and related career scripts (Fraher and Gabriel, 2014;Jackall, 1988Jackall, /2010Stovel and Savage, 2006) remain undeniably prevalent in the thought and practices of certain individuals and organizations, resulting in challenges for managerial identity construction (Bardon et al, 2017;Harding et al, 2014;Maclean et al, 2011;Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003).…”