Role of Middle Management in Innovation Process

Middle managers operate in an environment close to activities of their firm and in interaction with this environment identify opportunities, challenges, and subsequently generate innovation alternatives. While doing so they - among other - utilize also weak ties within their social network, which permeate internal and external environment of the firm and enable entry of new and divergent information in the innovation process. Middle managers communicate selected information to senior management levels, and the communication exchange between the middle and top management facilitates compliance with the firms innovation strategy, ensures resources as well as high level support for the implementation of innovation; middle managements information inputs at the same time influence senior management in defining the firms innovation strategy. In contact with ordinary employees (and lower levels of management), middle management compensates for differences between strategy and current activities of the firm, promotes innovation and overcomes resistance. To ensure support for innovation within the organization, middle managers draw, inter alia, on their internal networks of strong ties, including their informal components. Middle management acts as a communication bridge, which helps to balance the tensions originating from the differences between environments of the senior management and employees. From this perspective, the communication interfaces between the different levels of management, or the companys hierarchy, seem to play a critical role; my research at the same time indicates there are significant differences in perception between middle and senior management of intracompany processes enabling innovation.