The Experience of Being a Manager

Mid hierarchical managers have a number of different pressures placed on them at work, as they are responsible for the output of junior staff, they must liaise with peers at the same organisational level and report to superiors on a regular basis. Thus, there are a number of interactions that they are involved with. In the social sciences, a relatively new approach is that they manage these interactions to create impressions that fit with the context of the situation, referred to as identity work. Additionally, the manager's behaviour at work may be influenced by home life pressures which would also be unique to the individual. Hence, the manager is faced with a double control problem of managing his or her own life whilst managing a team at work, which can be riddled with a variety of complex social relationships. Using case study analysis of individual managers, this research investigates the main challenges, rewards and difficulties of being a middle manager in a large modern corporation and detects the strategic implications of these experiences and circumstances of the manager. Recognising that all people engage in identity work all of the time, the most frequent and conscious identity work in the workplace occurs in the company of senior management among whom middle managers have the most strained relationships. Poor relationships are largely due to the geographical dispersion of management teams in this organisation. The least problematic group to interact with are subordinates, despite the constant distractions and interruptions of junior staff asking questions. Relationships with other managers at the same level also cause a problem as weak relationships here mean that cooperation and coordination between the different departments in the organisation is poor. Thus the main challenges for middle managers at work involve managing the social relationships with super ordinates and other managers at the same level, in order to achieve personal work related goals as well as company wide objectives most efficiently