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Middle Managers Create Own Meanings During Forced Change

Although this was not the point to the study, an example of how not to implement significant change appeared when two researchers looked at how middle managers tried to make sense of a transition that split one division of a utility company into three. Senior managers developed the new structure without significant involvement of middle managers, who nonetheless "had to develop the details of their roles and responsibilities themselves once appointed to (reassigned within) the new structure," the authors report.

The researchers asked 26 middle managers (out of the 90 involved) to keep diaries over the year the transition was scheduled to take. The diarists were asked to record their thoughts periodically on these questions:

1. "What is going well and why?
2. "What is going badly and why?
3. "What problems do you foresee?
4. "What have been the significant events?
5. "What rumors and stories are circulating?"

The researchers then categorized the responses and followed up with interviews. They were interested in the managers' thought processes, but this summary will focus on the practical results reported. Not surprisingly, significant tensions developed, "leading to poor customer response times…" The managers started out with a strong sense of purpose and identification when they were part of the same division. As the split advanced, some managers seemed to expect everyone to both maintain "business as usual" while also handling their new responsibilities, a position other managers resented. Managers in the service divisions thought those remaining in the core division began to treat them as contractors instead of colleagues as they used to. (The new engineering and support divisions provided services to the core division, and could lose that business to outsourcing if their costs were not competitive.) When identification with the new divisions occurred, it often was of the "us versus them" variety.

Eventually negotiations and a formal service contract approach reduced the problems. The researchers concluded that even though previous studies focused on the role of senior managers in change, the thoughts and actions by middle managers "have a more direct impact on change outcomes, and therefore on the way a structural blueprint designed by seniors works in practice." These "change recipients" create change as they discuss the meaning of top-manager directives with each other.

Source: Balogun, J., and G. Johnson (04), "Organizational Restructuring and Middle Manager Sensemaking," Academy of Management Journal 47(4):523.