Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Middle managers'

Many industries have gone through changes in the last decades, everyone involved have been affected but few have encountered the same amount of changes as the middle managers. Being in the centre of the organisation, torn between wills, middle managers have struggled during the last years to redefine their job. There exists research describing their workdays, what they do and how they spend their time, but we have not found any study that has tried to investigate what challenges the middle managers face.

The purpose of this study is to identify the challenges faced by internally-promoted middle managers.

This thesis uses an inductive approach to fulfil the purpose; the main motivation for the chosen approach is the authors’ reluctance to let any existing theories guide the process. Instead, it is now believed to capture what middle managers actually find challenging and not reject or confirm the work of others which are not directly aimed at the same problem area. The empirical material has been gathered by using qualitative semi-structured interviews with eight middle managers in the auditing industry.

We consider the greatest challenges faced by middle managers to be prioritising in situations of limited time. Since the middle managers tend to leave internal issue to be handled later and instead put their primary focus on customers; relational related issues are found very challenging. Among these; finding a proper level for criticism, handling conflicting expectations and lead personnel in general were emphasized. Administrative related issues was also found challenging, but not to the same extent as relational related challenges. Among the administrative issues: fulfilling goals, scheduling and planning, implementing unsupported decisions, and filter information were stressed as most challenging.

Problem: A hardening business climate all over the world has resulted in company downsizing, which in turn has increased the workload and created a more stressful workday for middle managers. This has developed a new pressure upon middle managers to manage their work days efficiently, and in order to do this they have to make good use of their restricted time. One way to handle this is to utilize more efficient planning and time allocation, which also might have an impact on middle managers’ perceived stress.

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze everyday planning and its potential impact upon the perceived stress among middle managers in medium sized organizations.

Method: We use a qualitative method in this study and, in order to receive the information needed, ten middle managers from five different companies have been interviewed. The middle managers work at medium sized manufacturing companies located in the Jönköping region. The empirical material is analyzed together with the frame of reference which constitutes the basis for the conclusions.

Result: From the study it can be concluded that middle managers feel that it would be almost impossible to manage their work days without planning. All middle managers claim that they are in control of the work days, but it seem like it is often occurring that upcoming projects, assignments, or different unexpected occurrences instead control their days. The middle managers experience stress originating from both social and emotional stressors, and since the feelings of experienced time stress are often occurring, a conclusion may be that the middle managers perceived stress can be related to their planning.

Flera undersökningar åskådliggör att organisationsstruktur spelar en avgörande roll och påverkar anställdas attityder och arbetsresultat. Organisationskultur beskriver hur medlemmarna upplever organisationens karaktär och har en starkt motiverande effekt hos organisationens medarbetare. De humana organisationerna är de effektivaste och undersökningar styrker argumentet att ledare påverkar sina anställdas arbetstillfredsställelse och arbetsresultat. Med anledning av detta är det förhållandevis logiskt att de framgångsrikaste ledarna medvetet skapar en stark organisationskultur på sin arbetsplats.

Arbetstillfredsställelse har likheter med organisationskultur, men organisationskultur är beskrivande medan arbetsillfredsställelse är utvärderande. Vidare finns det samband mellan motivation och arbetstillfredsställelse. Arbetstillfredsställelse är ett resultat av det förflutna medan motivation är en förväntning avseende framtida händelser. Stress är en individuell process och faktumet att stressfaktorerna är additiva, medför att organisationerna måste ta hänsyn till den totala mängden stress som den anställde utsätts för. Vidare påvisar undersökningar att stressade ledare skapar stressade organisationer och anställda.

Syftet med studien är att beskriva hur mellanchefer vid Kriminalvården i Tidaholm upplever förväntningar från organisationen och organisationens anställda, samt hur detta på-verkar mellanchefernas individuella situation ur ett stress perspektiv.

Syftet uppfylls genom att applicera en kvalitativ ansats i vilken data insamlades genom personliga intervjuer. Målgruppen för undersökningen utgjordes nio mellanchefer (kriminalvårdsinspektörer), vilka hade samma chefer men olika arbetsuppgifter. Resultaten från studien visar att arbetsbelastning och tidsbrist är källor till stress. Tillsammans skapade dessa faktorer en upplevd känsla av otillräcklighet. Vidare klargjordes att bristfälligt ledarskap och känslan av osäkerhet var viktiga stressfaktorer. Internernas beteende kunde också skapa stressfulla situationer. Det fanns även exempel på dåliga erfarenheter när flera orutinerade medarbetare arbetade tillsammans. Stress vilken kunde härledas från överordnade bearbetades likartat av respondenterna, medan stress från underordnade bearbetades olika. Samtliga Kriminalvårdinspektörer menade att stress påverkar ledarskapet. Deras uppfattning hur stress påverkar överordnades och eget ledarskap varierade. Mellancheferna i denna studie besvärades av arbetsuppgifter vilka skickades direkt från Kriminalvårdsstyrelsen. Denna typ av uppgifter och ansvarsfördelning var svår att påverka. Vidare föreföll det inte vara ovanligt att denna typ av arbetsuppgifter utretts vid ett tidigare tillfälle. Dessa händelser indikerar att organisationen har klassiska problem att leda kunskap, såsom att lagra, handha, fördela, och sprida kunskap. I denna studie vandrar stress i båda riktningar, från botten mot toppen, eller från toppen mot botten.

Several investigations illustrate that the organizational structure has a mayor impact on worker attitudes and performance. Organizational culture describes how members experience the organizations characteristics and has a strong motivating effect to the organiza-tions employees. The most human organizations are more efficient and research strengthens the argument that leaders affect their subordinates job satisfaction and performance. It is then logical why the most successful leaders have created strong organizational cultures.

The approach job satisfaction has similarities with organizational culture but organizational culture is descriptive, while job satisfaction is evaluative. Further is there a relationship between motivation and satisfaction, even if they not are exactly comparable, actually they are quite different. Satisfaction is namely an outcome of the past and motivation is an expectation about the future. Stress is an individual process and the fact that stressors are additive means that the organizations have to consider the total sum stress an employee is exposed to. Furthermore illustrates research that stressed leaders create stressed organizations and employees.

The purpose of this thesis is to describe how middle managers in The Prison and Probation Service in Tidaholm perceive the expectations, from the organization and the organizations employees, and how this affects the middle managers individual situation from a perspective of stress.

The purpose was fulfilled by applying a qualitative research approach where data was collected through interviews. The target group included nine Middle managers (kriminalvårdsinspektörer) who had same superior managers but different working tasks. The results of the study indicates that workload was a source of stress and time was perceived to be a limit. This together created a feeling of insufficiency. Further were unclear leadership and the feeling of uncertainty important stress factors. The prisoners’ behaviour could also create stressful situations and there were bad experiences when several inexperienced employees worked together. Stress created from superiors was handled identically, while stress from subordinates was worked on differently. The respondents agreed that stress affects leadership. The opinions differed concerning how it affected their superiors- and their own leadership. What concerned the Middle managers were the assignments that came directly from the Kriminalvårdsstyrelsen. This flow of responsibilities and tasks were hard to affect. Often were the assignments investigated earlier, which indicates that the organization has classical knowledge management problems, like to store, handle and spread knowledge. In this study walks stress in both directions, from the bottom to the top, or from the top to the bottom.

As a result of organizational restructuring, the role of the middle managers has changed over time. Studies of change processes have increasingly placed focus on middle managers. According to researchers, middle managers play a key role in implementing the change. When putting the change into practice, there are factors affecting the middle managers. However, further research is needed regarding what constrains and enables the middle manager in these change processes.

Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to explore the sensemaking and sensegiving process during organizational change, with focus on middle managers. To answer to the purpose, a theoretical model combining Balogun and Johnson’s (2005), Nonaka and Takeuchi’s (1995) models and theories of middle management is developed. By using the model we analyze the centralization of the accounting departments at the Swedish energy company Vattenfall. This change process constitutes the case of this thesis.

The empirical findings are based on ten interviews and two group discussions with top management, middle managers, co-workers as well as other key actors in the project providing trustworthiness to our study. A qualitative method using an abductive approach is used in the thesis to explore the actors’ interpretation of the change and capture the complexity of the case.

The conclusion includes enablers and constraints during the sensemaking and sensegiving process for the middle managers during the centralization of Vattenfall’s accounting departments. The identified enablers are the communication channels, a middle manager’s awareness of employees’ approach of making sense, the provided tools used to adjust working processes, some Business Units’ initial negative attitude towards the change, as well as the rejuvenated spirit. Finally, the middle managers themselves enabled the change as a result of their unique role in the organization.

On the other hand, the recognized constraints in the sensemaking and sensegiving process of the middle managers are; concerns regarding middle managers’ future employment, their ‘stuck in the middle’ position, limited resources, new working processes not adopted by some co-workers, and positive attitudes that resulted to flaws in the planning at some Business Units.