Middle Management Role

With increasing pace of change in today’s business environment due to globalization of competition, demanding customers and rapidly changing technologies, the role of middle level managers has shifted to supporting the top management’s vision by developing and promoting initiatives that respond to changing conditions (Floyd and Woolridge 2009) (Lakshmi, 2005).

The changing orientation of middle management work have shifted from traditional orientation to its present status. To wit, instead of developing coordination within functional boundaries, it became boundary spanning (relationships across boundaries), from controlling growth it became finding innovation (championing), executing plans to synthesizing information (adapted from Floyd and

Briggs (2002) not only appears to recognise the dual identity aspect of the role of middle manager, that is academic colleague and line-manager, but also identifies the downward flow of authority or power, which ultimately affects their ability to lead. While there are a number of factors that clearly affect the middle managers’ ability to lead, there is little doubt that ‘leadership’ is an important characteristic of their role . This being the case, it becomes important to understand the practical inter-play of leadership with management, especially as it relates to the every day role and tasks that middle managers

While there are a number of factors that clearly affect the middle managers’ ability to lead, there is little doubt that ‘leadership’ is an important characteristic of their role . This being the case, it becomes important to understand the practical inter-play of leadership with management, especially as it relates to the every day role and tasks that middle managers perform.

Bush (2004) in discussing the changing role of academic middle leaders’ in schools suggests that there has been a gradual acceptance of the leadership role, arguing that: “The development of the middle leaders’ role during the past 15 years has seen a gradual shift from a focus on heads of department as senior teachers, acting as role models for their colleagues, through an acceptance of the requirement to undertake often routine administrative or managerial responsibilities, then to a wider recognition of the need to lead a professional team of subject