Background: Previous researchers have identified perceptions and practices as key barriers to women's advancement opportunities. Moreover, the region of Umeå in Sweden has been experiencing a low representation of female managers, and the manufacturing industry is male-dominated throughout the country. Management perceptions of female managers could be categorized in four different perspectives and these were used after some modification, by adding other, relevant theories from the field of women in management. Organizational practices had shown to be crucial in enforcing gender equality in organizations, and for this study, internal and external recruitment, succession planning and training and development were explored. The intention was to explore how organizational practices had been influenced by management perceptions of female managers, by looking for indicators within these.Purpose: To explore how management, in general, perceive female managers, and how these perceptions might influence organizational practices.Research questions: How do management of several manufacturing companies in the Umeå region perceive female middle managers? and Do these perceptions affect the organizational practices? If so, how?Key concepts:Management perceptions: Subjective constructions of human behavior, more specifically, management attitudes and beliefs towards female middle managers.Middle manager: Someone who deals directly with employees and is in charge of at least one subordinate level and reports to a top-level manager.Organizational practices: Strategic activities in a company.Methodology: This exploratory study was conducted with a qualitative approach using semi-structured interviews. Primary data was collected from six different companies in the Umeå Region and secondary data consisted of scientific articles.Findings and conclusions: The perceptions of female middle managers held by management at manufacturing companies in the Umeå Region did influence the organizational practices. In general, all had positive perceptions of women in terms of the economic benefits that they could bring to the companies. In addition, women’s opportunities in the manufacturing companies were influenced by management perceptions of whether women were considered to have the necessary, technical competencies for management positions. Furthermore, it was concluded that those manufacturing companies whose management prioritized the questions of women in management, had the highest representation of female middle managers.

U.S. public institutions of higher education are unique work environments that employ millions of faculty, staff, and administrators. Reported research on human resource issues for non-academic employees within higher education, however, is scarce. Given that staff who work in higher education are increasingly being asked to perform at higher levels with equal or fewer resources, research is needed as to how these outcomes can be achieved. The purpose of this study was to determine to what extent non-academic middle manager participative and supportive leadership behaviors are related to employee perceptions of meaningful work (conceptualized as growth satisfaction, empowerment, person-job fit, and affiliation commitment) and to employee learning goal orientation, organizational citizenship behavior, and intention to turnover. A population of 4,235 employees within a large public institution of higher education in the southwestern part of the United States was asked to participate in an online survey. The survey was comprised of items from eight validated instruments with 45 items and additional demographic information. Respondents totaled 1,333 (31.5%). Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for reliability, exploratory factor analysis, and structural equation modeling techniques. Results of the study led to revisions of the initially proposed constructs via exploratory factor analysis, giving rise to seven constructs: Cooperative Leader Behavior, Work Fulfillment and Identity, Work Influence and Affiliation, Learning Goal Orientation, Personal Industry, Interpersonal Helping, and Intention to Turnover. Evaluation of the structural model for the revised constructs, with one added path, resulted in good fit (chi^2=3246.397 [796]=4.078, p=.000; CFI=.941; TLI=.936; RMSEA .048; SRMR=.051). Cooperative Leader Behavior was significantly and positively related to employee perceptions of Work Fulfillment and Identity (beta=.517, p<.05) and Work Influence and Affiliation (beta=.643, p<.05). Cooperative Leader Behavior, Work Fulfillment and Identity, and Work Influence and Affiliation were significantly and negatively related to Intention to Turnover (beta=-.436, p<.05; beta=-.480, p<.05; beta=-.293, p<.05, respectively). Work Fulfillment and Identity was significantly and positively related to Learning Goal Orientation (beta=.261, p<.05) and Personal Industry (beta=.309, p<.05). Work Influence and Affiliation was significantly and positively related to Interpersonal Helping (beta=.274, p<.05). Finally, Work Fulfillment and Identity and Work Influence and Affiliation had a significant bi-directional relationship (beta=.848, p<.05). Conclusions drawn from the results of this study led to, 1) recommendations and implications for the training and development of middle managers, 2) recommendations and implications for theory and research, and 3) recommendations and implications for practice. Higher education institutions that desire to foster employee perceptions of meaningful work and influence performance drivers such as intention to turnover should focus on developing middle-manager cooperative leadership behaviors. Additional research is needed to continue to revise, refine and validate the new constructs identified in this study, as well as to identify additional performance drivers in higher education responsive to cooperative leader behavior.

Work environment has been an important part of the Swedish working life for a long time and with the help of the Working Environment Law the work environment is mandatory. The purpose of this study was to gain a deeper insight into how the system of middle managers systematic work environment looks like. The question was: How do six middle managers perceive and deal with systematic work environment? A qualitative study was conducted with six middle managers from a global company. During the analysis, there were three main themes to be recognized (cooperation and support facilitates the work environment, problem with the systematic work and difficulties with staff) and six sub themes. The results showed that respondents felt great support from management and safety representatives, which according to the respondents made ​​their systematic work environment easier. In contrast, respondents indicated that work environment was extensive and because of that the experience was that the work never gets finished. It also emerged in the results that the systematic work environment is about trying to change staff attitudes. The conclusion is that systematic work environment is not an easy task for middle managers. Moreover, it seems that systematic work environment also involve working to change attitudes and behaviors. The study wants to contribute to a greater understanding of how the system of middle managers work with the systematic work environment looks like.

During the 1990's, most Hong Kong companies experienced extremely high Voluntary Turnover among middle managers. This thesis attempts to find the causes of such turnover through quantitative analysis and at the same time assess the state of Succession Planning implementation in 10 subsidiaries of US multinational companies as a potential remedy to such turnover. Lack of career advancement and promotion opportunities was found by employees to be the leading cause of voluntary turnover whereas employers believe basic salary and other remuneration components are the main causes. In 9 companies out of 10, Succession Planning is found to be short on basic success criteria such as formalization, buget, support from top management, I.T. support, integra- tion with strategic HR planning, accountability and continuous review process / thesis (PhDBusinessandManagement)--University of South Australia, 2003.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Western Sydney, 2002. / "Thesis submitted ... in fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Law and Business, University of Western Sydney, NSW, Australia" Bibliography : leaves 186-196.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Bowling Green State University, 2009. / Document formatted into pages; contains xi, 145 p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (MTech (Education))--Peninsula Technikon, 2005. / Word processed copy. Summary in English. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-110). Also available online.

Critical scholars have written about the ‘squeezed middle' and the new labour process of front line and middle managers generally, but there is a gap in the literature relating to both how changes to managerial work have affected those subjected to them and how individuals and organisations have attempted to respond to, and cope with, public sector cuts and challenges. Much of contemporary HRD writing on change management suggests that leadership development has a privileged role in adjusting the ‘worker' to the situation. However, given the implicitly unitarist nature of much HRD writing, this thesis argues that insights from such literature is inadequate or incomplete because it fails to consider the interests of managers as employees. The focus of this thesis is on middle managers' (MM) ability to overcome the public sector challenges associated with work intensification; control and skills adaption via learning and development initiatives. This qualitative research comprises a data set of 17 in-depth interviews and 34 complementary semi-structured questionnaire's with middle managers in the Hong Kong Civil Service. Thematic analysis revealed that whilst managers and the organisation benefit from leadership development in terms of human capital development, power differentials and structural impediments limit the capacity to benefit from social capital and networking opportunities provided. As such LDP cannot compensate for work intensification, leading to a stressed-out, disempowered, squeezed middle management cadre, which in turn impacts on public service delivery.

The general aim of this research was to investigate the phenomenon of non coping among individuals on middle management level, directed by the paradigm of salutogenesis, and more specifically, the concept of Sense of Coherence. The Sense of Coherence questionnaire of Antonovsky (1987) was applied as a measuring instrument in order to determine the various levels of respondents regarding Sense of Coherence. This was followed by semi-structured interviews with an identified case series, followed by an integration of results. Research information derived from the total scores indicated an even distribution along the continuum of the instrument's scale. During the qualitative study, all individuals representing the case series experienced similar levels of stress, though various coping strategies apply. Although all individuals representing the case series attempt to cope, a tendency towards non coping or maladaptive coping occurred due to the influence of various sources Of managerial stress such as insufficient training. / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / M.A. (Industrial Psychology)

M.Ed. / The major problem in this research is that middle managers at the Foundation Phase seem not to be satisfying their roles of managing other educators, and learners’ activities and implementing curricula in class. The main aim of the research is to probe how the management roles impact on the Foundation Phase middle managers’ performance and to suggest ways and means to assist in the running of their daily activities as both managers and educators. The other aim is to suggest how the middle managers could synchronise the two roles maximally and to make recommendations regarding the way the two roles could be executed with ease. This is a qualitative research. The techniques and tools to be used are a phenomenological approach, in depth interviews, questionnaires and observations for data collection, while a descriptive analytical approach is used for data analysis. The findings are that middle managers at the Foundation Phase have a responsibility far above their capabilities. They are overloaded, overburdened and over- worked. The recommendations are that the middle managers should be supported by all stakeholders in education particularly the department of education which should reduce the educator-learners ratio and also provide them with assistants in classes. It is further recommended that future research should focus attention on establishing benchmarks for workloads in schools and colleges.