This paper offers a political explanation for the diffusion and sustainability of team-based work systems by examining the differential outcomes of team structures for 1200 workers, supervisors, and middle managers in a large unionized telecommunications company. Regression analyses show that participation in self-managed teams is associated with significantly higher levels of perceived discret...

TAM has been developed to explain user acceptance of new information technologies. Empirical studies of this and other models, however, have based their conclusions on surveys of middle managers or MBA students. Given strong differences between middle managers or MBAs and physicians, we argue that these models may not predict well the attitudes of physicians towards a new IT. Therefore, we prop...

Using data from a large European financial services firm which engaged in an entrepreneurial initiative to enhance its competitiveness, this paper explores the strategic role of middle managers in the context of corporate entrepreneurship and its link to multiple dimensions of performance. The findings indicate that middle managers’ role can be decomposed along four reliable and stable dimensio...

W use unique data from 245 stores of a UK retailer to study links among middle (store) manager skills, sales, and manager pay. We find that, of the six management practice areas surveyed, the most important is “commercial awareness,” where abler managers achieve up to 13.9% higher sales per worker. We find that many stores have poor managers on this indicator. However, the company is careful to...

Purpose – To examine how a manager’s strategic philosophy is influenced by his or her management level in the organization. Design/methodology/approach – Scales are developed to measure managers’ philosophical perspectives along three key dimensions and tested with 289 managers in the United States. Refined scales are administered to 237 managers. Findings – A manager’s level in the organizatio...

We study the effect of earnings manipulation on incentives within the corporate hierarchy. Division managers have to be compensated for not blowing the whistle when top managers manipulate earnings. We show that it is easier for division managers to prove top management’s manipulations when the performance of their own division is low. Earnings manipulation therefore undermines middle managers’...