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Line Managers

These individuals usually manage an entire business unit and have "return-on-investment" responsibilities. Line managers should be categorized as those who have middle managers reporting to them-they are, in effect, managers of managers, or as in some organizations, they serve a "director" function. Such individuals are in many ways considered future executives and perform many low-end executive tasks. They are, if you will, executives in training.

What is significant about this manager level is the knowledge it carries about operations. However, line managers are still very involved in daily operations and maintain their own technical capabilities.

First-Line Managers

These individuals manage non-managers, but can have supervisory employees who report to them. They do not carry the responsibility for a budget-line unit, but rather a department within the unit. These managers have specific goals that can be tied to their performance and to the department's productivity.

Supervisor

This is the lowest-level middle manager. These individuals manage operational personnel within the department. Their management activities are typically seen as "functions," as opposed to managing an entire operation. These middle managers do not have other supervisors or management-level personnel reporting to them.

We should remember that definitions typically used to characterize the "middle" sectors of management, as described by researchers like Peters, Nonaka, and others, do not come from exact science. The point must be made that middle managers cannot be categorized by a single definition, but rather require distinctive definitions within each level of stratification I presented above.

Therefore, being more specific about the "level" of the middle manager can help us determine the manager's role in the strategic learning process. Given that Nonaka and Takeuchi provide the concept of middle-up-down as it related to knowledge management, I wish to broaden it into a larger subject of strategic learning as a method of evolving changes in culture and organizational thinking.

Furthermore, information technology projects, unlike other organizational studies, represents both situational learning as well as ongoing evolutionary learning requirements. Evolutionary learning provides a difficult challenge to organizational learning concepts. Evolutionary learning requires significant contribution from middle managers.

The next Langer Report will delve deeper into understanding the complexity of the "middle manager" and introduce a process called Management Vectors.

Comments (2)

	1. 03-31-2009 01:22
	Dear Dr. Langer,  Welcome to reality. In 2 years, 22hrs a day 7 day/wk I have fought at put in place the theory you are writing about. I wish I could help you expand the current relevance, because it is a sign of decay, corporate arrogance and lack of Corporate Governance not to mention ethics and customer service. I would like to quote part if I have your permission. You are welcome to see the reality of what you a writing bout on my blogs like http://pmbzone77.blogspot.com.  Best regards,  Photi M. Bouri Registered

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	2. 04-01-2009 13:26
	Art    Interesting article. In my experience, getting buy in from the middle management layer is critical to the success of any change initiative.     An interesting thing that I observed is that first level and mid-level managers think of "management" as those above them in the hierarchy. They just execute on the direction from above. Key is to get them to feel that they are part of management that is driving the organization's strategic agenda. Registered

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