INSTRUCTIONS: Please RESPOND to this answer from the Point of view as a student. Use credible sources and respond as if you are a manager of a marketing agency. Tell this student what your agency would think of each of these answers:
Middle management gets a bad reputation although not always unearned. There is a strong case that middle management is more important than senior management when taken as a group. The quality of middle management could easily be more valuable to a company than any super high quality senior leaders, although the quality of that middle management is the responsibility of senior management, sorta.
The two cases that I use to prove this point is the first is the description of the dismantling of Pablo Ecobar’s cocaine cartel in the 80s and early 90s. Per Mark Bowden in “Killing Pablo” (2001) the removal of street level workers resulted in them being replaced as fast as Search Bloc could remove them. The search for Pablo himself was unsuccessful. It is important to note that there is no evidence of any US agency participating in the extra judicial execution of the middle management of the Escobar’s cartel, that they only killed people not under US surveillance is purely coincidence. The second example follows the first, targeted kinetic removal of middle management is the current US policy in fighting terror networks, to this day.
In the end whereas Carpenter and Sanders (2008) state that middle management provides, lateral communication and can solve problems before they grow out of control. However they don’t go far enough, middle management probably represents the most important resource that a company has, because after a certain size, Jared Diamond (1997) supposes around 60 people, middle management becomes an absolute necessity. Middle management sets the tone, they are a reflection of senior management’s beliefs and the first people lower management turn to when in trouble. Thus they are a valuable resource, perhaps the application of the VRINE model would tell us how valuable.
Bowden, Mark. Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw. New York: Atlantic Monthly, 2001. Print.
Carpenter, M., Sanders, W. (2008). Strategic Management: A Dynamic Perspective. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Prentice Hall.
Diamond, Jared M. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997. Print.
