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Introduction Middle managers are pivotal actors in the processes of change and its management, that play a role between top management and employees (Harding, Lee and Ford, 2014). They undertake the functions of translating formal and administrative rules into practical working rules, coordinate work of their subordinates and pass important information from the button up (Giauques, 2015). Research poses two perspectives – firstly, Rouleau and Balogun (2010) highlights the important strategic role middle managers play within organisations such as strategic sense making and discursive competence whilst Currie and Procter (2002) emphasises the impact of Managing Information Systems (MIS) and ICT enhances the role and used to synthesise information from MIS/IT for executive management. In this essay an assessment of these two approaches will undertaking, whilst referring to case studies to support literature.

Organisations use middle management to make sense of the environment around them as they are placed at the centre of the hierarchy. Rouleau and Balogun (2010) acknowledge the important strategic role middle managers withhold in the formulation and implementation of communicating strategic change clearly to lower levels, upwards as well as laterally. Middle managers are usually known to have wide knowledge of the organisation they operate in allowing the familiarity of the culture and social setting, resulting in the capability of understanding the most effective way to influence those around them. The adaption of this skill results in sense making capabilities, which heightens the significance of the middle manager as it leads into the successful doing of communicating and diffusing strategic change (Balogun, 2003). Radio Canada, faced a new competitive environment which involved revolutionary technological change. Mary & Roberts two middle managers were in charge of the organisations transformation, and with the relevant with language, verbal techniques drawing on sociocultural knowledge helped transform and restructure Radio Canada sharing tacit knowledge.

On the other hand, Currie and Procter (2002), arguably sees the role of middle managers being re-shaped and/or enhanced by MIS and IT. The authors view the role as being informational and decisional to which majority of the decisions the managers make are repetitive and require ‘little flexibilities’ which computers have the ability to do (Simon, 1960). Mintzberg (1994) makes the point of a managers’ role must be directly involved in the execution of staff, and be more than just the delegation and monitoring of staff. For instance, instead of instigating a manager to monitor attendance the application of clock in systems can be implemented allowing the information to flor directly to executive management rather than through middle managers. As a result of the efficiency of MIS/IT the power of middle managers becomes eliminated, yet researchers noted that to supplant middle managers MIT/IT require an environmental trigger, competitive or cost pressure (Pinsonneault and Kraemer, 1993). The alternative view of MIS/IT is act or re-shaping or enhancing the role, oppose to eliminating. Researchers believe that MIS/IT decreases the need for a small portion of managerial activity as it cannot replace the interpersonal skills and unstructured decision-making middle managers devour.

- Quicker decision making

Thousands of middle managers at UK banks fall into a regulatory “blind spot”, this was the case in with Lloyds Banking Group as in 2011 they announced the cut of 15,000 middle managers, hoping to save £1.5 billion a year. “The days of general managers who know a little about a lot of things are completely over” (Economist, 2011). Organisations are realising that the work that middle managers do is simply not enough and team ae often aided by technology to monitor output and give each other feedback – two main role of an middle manager.

Conclusion

- Talk about different company sizes and how middle manager role may differ - Argue that the human element is needed to process MIS/IT data into information “Middle managers play a key role in the knowledge creation process. They synthesise the tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge” (Nonkaka and Takeucki, 1996 - Talk about media richness theory

Introduction Organisations process information to reduce task related uncertainty and equivocality in order to attain an acceptable level of performance (Galbraith, 1973; Weick, 1979). Galbraith (1997) defines uncertainty as “the difference between the amount of information required to perform the task and the amount of information already possessed by the organisation”. Organisations that face high uncertainty have to ask a large number of questions and acquire more information to learn the answers, normally resulting in the slow progression of tasks and inadequate performance. Equivocality means ambiguity, the existence of multiple and conflicting interpretation about an organisational situation (Weick, 1979). When this exists in an organisation there are high levels of confusion and lack of understanding. To avoid these negative constructs this essay will be examining the use of communication in the workplace and analysing if the social setting or individual choice of communication is best.

Media Richness Theory Daft and Lengel (1984) propose the Media Richness Theory (MRT) as a framework used to rank and evaluate the richness of communication mediums in aid to reduce ambiguity through media selection. The more effective a medium is, the richer it deems to be. Richness is measured on the terms of; facilitating multiple forms of Feedback, the range and variety of Multiple Cues (e.g. Body Language), Language Variety to add greater precision (e.g. Numbers) and Personal Focus (e.g. tailored messages). Using these assumptions, Daft and Lengel build the hierarchy of media richness commencing with Face-to-Face and Video Conferencing being richer mediums and Written Documents and Unaddressed Documents signifying leaner mediums. The rationale behind the theory implies tasks of high ambiguity and equivocality should be addressed using rich mediums, however implications such as time, effort and availability can obstruct such mediums from being used. - Examples Social Influence Considering the availability of multiple communication mediums, there is a debate about the social setting placing more importance than individual choice when shaping communication in the workplace. Firstly, the social setting approach is assessed by defining the term as “the culture of the society where rules and expectations reflect on the social behaviour within the workplace” (Dorian,2009). Markus (1994) took an institutional approach to examine the impact of email in organisations and found that despite email scoring as a ‘lean’ medium in terms of the MRT it was widely used by managers in her research. Similar findings were also found in Robertson, Sorenson and Swan (2001) study of a science consultancy. Despite possessing tools which possess richer features for communication, notably the type of medium that is used by majority is continued and becomes a form of practise due to the implicit expectation within the organisation. The Social Influence Model (SIM) suggests that individuals’ media perceptions are socially constructed. Media properties such as richness are posited to be subjective and influenced by attitudes and behaviour to some extent of others in the workplace (Fulk, Schmitz and Steinfield, 1998). Media richness is potentially richness of information and knowledge transfer, by managers conforming to these social norms negatively affect the organisation. Putting this case into perspective, a manager failing to use the correct medium to communicate to an employee can result in the misunderstanding and wrong interpretation of tasks causing lack of productivity which then subsequently has a knock-on effect on the organisation as a whole. However, Derbyshire (2011 p.1) argues that managers are bombarded with an almost constant stream of data every day, equivalent to of “every person in the world reading 174 newspapers every single day”. Bearing this in mind, although it may seem as the social behaviour - communication in MNEs are bound to follow the same trend of a high use of leaner mediums due to the high frequency of tasks and streams of data that needs to be shared. Moss-Jones (1999) exemplifies the benefit of this as it gives managers more time to reflect and increase the pace and fragmentation of work within organisation. Controversy, Daft and Lengel (1986) argues that the process of new data may not resolve anything when equivocality is high. It can be questioned if social settings are developing at the same rate of technology? Following this, the essay will now look at the other hand of the argument by assessing individual choice.

Individual Choice As new proliferate and new combinations of media emerge, people in organisations are increasingly facing choices among several new media in addition to or even in lieu of traditional mediums (Negroponte, 1995). This suggests the need to examine individual choice when multiple mediums are available that allows communication to be made easier, more effectively and efficiently. Mintzberg (1994) makes the point of a managers’ role must be directly involved in the execution of staff, and be more than just the delegation and monitoring of staff. However, how may an international manager conform to the social setting, with limited time, availability and resources? Reder and Schwab (1988) looks into “channel equivalence” which is the ability to substitute a medium for an ideal communication medium, this is demonstrated in El-Shinnaway and Markus (1997) study that assessed that individuals prefer to communicate via vmail to resolve equivocality rather than email which stands as the most highly socially set form of communication. While 2.7 billion people may have internet connectivity, an estimated 4.5 billion people in the world have at least one active mobile device using platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn and WhatsApp, why should managers not be able to communicate in the way that’s efficient for then, regardless of social norms? Having the easy access of mobile communication has now made it easy to critique how relevant the MRT is in the modern day of business, as a number of mediums are now outdated with the modernised forms of communication. Individual choice can be critiqued in the sense of level of informality, as there is no social setting to set a common, acceptable ground.

Conclusion Concluding the points, it can be argued that the social setting is more important over individual choice as abiding to organisational culture allows the smooth run of communication. As the standards and expectations are already set, employees and managers know what to expect as well knowing exactly what medium to use without the worry of causing disrespect or being inappropriate. On the other hand, it can be argued that individual choice is important as the free choice of medium especially with the expansion of available mediums, allows managers to communicate efficiently in their own time frames and own method. It also gives MNCs the chance to develop communication on a wider scale without the worry of conforming to social settings. A solution to ensure managers avoid uncertainty and equivocality is the use of middle managers as a bridge between the levels within the hierarchy. The use of middle managers can be used to ensure the effective flow of information as they have more time to use a higher richness media with the lower levels if the hierarchy. Yet, with the development of technology and individual choice managers have the opportunity to communicate directly with the lower levels which the makes middle managers less significant.