The Strategic Middle Manager: How to Create and Sustain Competitive Advantage

By Bill Wooldridge and Steven W. Floyd

Book Overview

An exceptional job of refocusing the middle manager's role'a mustread for practitioners and educators alike. --Jack Viega, editor, The Academy of Management Executives In their quest to become leaner, flatter, and reengineered, organizations have systematically cut out the very positions thatonce made them successful'mid-level managers. In The StrategicMiddle Manager, management experts Steven Floyd and Bill Wooldridgedraw on a decade of research involving over 250 middle managers todemonstrate that the success of future organizations restsdecisively on strong middle management. The authors present the tools managers need to: * Redefine their roles * Increase their strategic value * Secure their futures * Identify the top performers in the ranks...and much more Far from lacking perspective, middle managers have a unique, pivotal perspective that places them at the forefront oforganizational change. They can play the role of champion, synthesizer, facilitator, and implementer--and this book gives theadvice needed to energize management. A must-read for trainingprofessionals, managers, and top executives, Floyd and Wooldridge'swork will radically redesign--and drastically improve--yourorganization's effectiveness.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 078790208X
• ISBN13: 9780787902087
• Release Date: April 1996
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 1.02 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

A much-needed and excellent work.

I use this book in my MBA and Undergraduate courses in Strategy. For my MBA students especially, young men and women of an average age of 27, in lower middle level management positions, this book makes strategic thinking and their role in it a concrete reality. They begin identifying immediately with the four roles of championing, synthesizing, facilitating, and implementing. Several of my students have become more assertive in their jobs as they have a better understanding of their role. A few have recognized that their firm has "no clue" about management in a rapidly changing and global environment and begun the search for a new position in a new company with a future. The Strategic Middle Manager is, indeed, a most valuable resource.Dr. Thomas A. Bausch Professor of Management Marquette University