Discussion of the Role of Middle ManagementDuring the 1980s and 1990s, in an increasingly globalized marketplace, downsizing and reengineering became common practice in businesses, eliminating much of the need for middle management, reducing costs, speeding up decisions and flattening organizational hierarchies around the world. . Middle managers began to be seen as unnecessary costs, easy to replace by shifting responsibility downward to their subordinates, and uncooperative, even having a negative impact on change. Although middle managers still exist today, they still have to deal with the general perception that their responsibilities could be shifted – even though they are often among the most experienced and knowledgeable employees in a department or organization. a business. This article compares three articles on the topic of middle management and applies these scenarios and opinions to real situations that I have experienced. Creating change intermediaries Recent studies have begun to reveal the importance of the role of the middle manager when an organization experiences change. In Balogun's article "From blaming the middle to exploiting its potential: creating change brokers", the author states that middle managers make a strategic contribution as a "change broker", referring to their role when implementing strategy or implementing change. Two opposing points See Observing the middle manager – one sees the middle manager as adding little value and resistant to change, and the other sees the middle manager as an essential part of implementing change in an organization. Balogun discusses a study that was done on middle managers during a transition period. year in an organization, including structural, operational and cultural changes. This study found that as “change brokers,” middle managers fulfill four roles: initiating personal change, helping others through change, implementing necessary changes in their department, and maintaining the business in activity. A simple, perfect example of when I met a co-worker acting as a go-between for change that occurred last spring at a new restaurant where I had started serving. The restaurant was only about 6 months old when the owners began discussing the current lax dress code and decided to implement more strict, professional dress code with more rules and more limitations on what servers could wear to work. Obviously, this was met with some resistance from the servers who had worked at the restaurant since day one, and implementation of the change was passed down from the owners, through the general manager, to the assistant manager , who was most responsible for ensuring that the changes were respected.