Top Management Teams

Chapter 5

Middle Manager Perspectives

What do middle managers find important in their top management team (TMT)? And how do they evaluate their TMT on those dimensions? These questions were the starting point of a large-scale investigation of middle managers’ perspectives in different countries.¹ In this chapter, I report some of the findings of this study. Thus, to complement chapter 4, in which the TMT’s perspective on middle managers was described, this chapter provides insight into the side of middle managers.

Insight into middle managers’ perspectives of their TMT is particularly relevant for TMTs, as such perspectives will often shape middle managers’ behavior toward the TMT. The way in which middle managers think and feel about the TMT ...