The Work of Middle Managers

Abstract

Corporate social initiatives are well positioned to generate virtuousness through and within organizations. Yet they are embedded in multiple and potentially contradictory institutional demands of profit and social logics, which must be addressed to sustain the initiative. Generatively addressing this perceived contradiction requires intentional and purposeful work by institutional actors. In this article, we posit that middle managers are crucial actors in performing this work and maintaining the hybridity of logics. We build on theories of institutional work and on sensemaking–sensegiving to describe the middle manager’s process of meeting competing demands of the initiative. We then propose a conceptual model and illustrate the posited relationships with data from the field. This describes how middle managers act on behalf of the organization and create virtuous human systems through sustenance of corporate social initiatives. We highlight various capacities required for this work and propose ways in which organizations can enable these capacities.