Scoping the Contribution of Middle Managers to the Strategic Change Process in Healthcare Organizations

Abstract

The implementation and change management literatures support the importance of leadership at all organizational levels to achieve meaningful change. Recent scholarship on strategic change processes has highlighted leadership of middle management, in particular. This chapter aims to better understand middle management’s contribution to strategic change processes in health care. The extant literature is synthesized and mapped out in order to better understand how middle managers contribute to and engage in strategic change processes and further explores current and future contributions of middle managers to these processes. Middle managers may be able to meaningfully influence all aspects of the strategic change process, but risk becoming barriers to the strategic change process without sufficient access to resources and an empowering environment from senior leadership.