ASSIGNMENT

Success and Failure of Middle Level Management



Success and Failure of Middle Level Management

Introduction

This assignment discusses four articles related to the topic. The base article chosen for this paper is by Tabrizi (2013). While, the other three sub-articles associated with the topic are by Newell & Dopson (1996), Nilakant (1991) and Wooldridge & Floyd (1990). The purpose of choosing these three sub-articles is to provide a brief summary of each along comparing and contrasting them with the base article by Tabrizi (2013) which is broadly based on the success and failures of middle level management. These sub-articles are individually summarized and analysed in light of the base article in the following section.

Discussion

Article by Newell & Dopson (1996)

This article highlights about the changes affecting the role of the middle level managers through researching upon twenty individual middle managers working in British Telecom-BT, who have experienced the redundancy program by the management (pp.4). The main aim of this article had been to analyse how restructuring the middle management career profile and growth in an organization, impacts the psychological relationship between the manager and the employer organization. The term psychological contract has been used to refer to the relationship between the manager and the organization, where the former exhibits through their effort and interest their association and loyalty to their employer. This is done through showing preferred actions and behaviours by the employees to their employers in exchange of receiving what they desire the most, such as salary and other benefits and job security amongst others. Conversely, with change in the external business environment as a result of new and evolving technology has led the organizations to realize that in order to maintain their profitability, long-term survival and productivity, they need to extract the work from their human capital or employee workforce (Newell & Dopson, 1996, pp.7).

However, the case findings by the authors suggest that majority of the managers or respondents at BT felt that they did not have a formal career path within the organization. While, only few of the middle level managers were optimistic about their career growth in the next few years. Thus, this led to an overall observation that the middle level managers at BT chose to remain in their current jobs because of other job factors such as salary and benefits. While, there was no formal relationship existing in terms of psychological contract, nor any efforts or willingness was observed amongst the managers to contribute to their work and expressed their desire to switch as soon as they find another lucrative job opportunity.

Furthermore, to contrast the above article with that of Tabrizi (2013) certain similarities and differences exist amongst the two. Similarity being that both the articles state that the role of middle level managers is seen as becoming obsolete in organizations that are adapting to the changing technology and new business challenges. However, this particular article suggests a research conducted at a large organization, of which twenty middle managers were part of the sample ...