Opportunity of Threat? Exploring Middle Manager Roles in the Face of Digital Automation

Sebastiaan Van Doorn; Dimitrios Georgakakis; Jana Oehmichen; Marko Reimer

doi:10.1111/joms.12880

Opportunity of Threat? Exploring Middle Manager Roles in the Face of Digital Automation

Sebastiaan Van Doorn^*, Dimitrios Georgakakis, Jana Oehmichen, Marko Reimer

^*Corresponding author for this work

The York Management School

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

With the proliferation of automation technology, controversy concerning the impact of digital automation on middle-managers’ strategic importance is rising. Some scholars adopt an ‘automation-as-a-threat’ view to argue that digital automation replaces middle-managers’ strategic value. On the contrary, others take an ‘automation-as-an-opportunity’ view to underscore the role accumulation advantages digital automation offers for individuals in organizations. We acknowledge this debate and develop a contingency-based role-theoretical framework, suggesting that the impact of automation on middle-managers’ strategic involvement depends on: (a) the nature of the middle-management tasks subject to automation, and (b) the level of the individual middle-manager's task-related expertise and simultaneous role embeddedness – as defined by their position tenure. We test our framework using longitudinal survey data from German, Swiss and Austrian firms at four time points. Overall, our work takes an important step toward unravelling the complex and contingent impact of digital automation on middle-managers’ strategic involvement in contemporary organizations.

Original language	English
Number of pages	36
Journal	Journal of Management Studies
Early online date	6 Nov 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12880
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 6 Nov 2022

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10.1111/joms.12880Licence: CC BY-NC

J Management Studies - 2022 - Van Doorn - Opportunity or Threat Exploring Middle Manager Roles in the Face of Digital
© 2022 The Authors.
Final published version, 632 KBLicence: CC BY-NC

Cite this

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title = "Opportunity of Threat? Exploring Middle Manager Roles in the Face of Digital Automation",

abstract = "With the proliferation of automation technology, controversy concerning the impact of digital automation on middle-managers{\textquoteright} strategic importance is rising. Some scholars adopt an {\textquoteleft}automation-as-a-threat{\textquoteright} view to argue that digital automation replaces middle-managers{\textquoteright} strategic value. On the contrary, others take an {\textquoteleft}automation-as-an-opportunity{\textquoteright} view to underscore the role accumulation advantages digital automation offers for individuals in organizations. We acknowledge this debate and develop a contingency-based role-theoretical framework, suggesting that the impact of automation on middle-managers{\textquoteright} strategic involvement depends on: (a) the nature of the middle-management tasks subject to automation, and (b) the level of the individual middle-manager's task-related expertise and simultaneous role embeddedness – as defined by their position tenure. We test our framework using longitudinal survey data from German, Swiss and Austrian firms at four time points. Overall, our work takes an important step toward unravelling the complex and contingent impact of digital automation on middle-managers{\textquoteright} strategic involvement in contemporary organizations.",

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