Discussing the Role of Middle ManagementDuring the 1980s and 1990s, in our increasingly global marketplace, downsizing and redesigning became common practice in business, eliminating much of the need for middle managers, reducing costs, accelerating decisions and flattening organizational hierarchies around the world. Middle managers began to be seen as unnecessary costs, easily replaced by shifting responsibility to their subordinates, and uncooperative, having a negative impact on change. Although middle managers still exist today, they still have to deal with the general idea that their responsibilities could be shifted, even though they are often among the most experienced and knowledgeable employees in a department or company. This article compares three articles on the topic of middle management and applies these scenarios and opinions to real-life situations I have experienced. Creating change intermediaries Recent studies have begun to reveal the importance of the middle manager's role when an organization is going through a change. In Balogun's article “From Blaming the Middle to Harnessing its Potential: Creating Change Intermediaries” the author states that middle managers make strategic contributions as “change intermediaries,” referring to their role during strategy implementation or l implementation of change. Two opposing points of looking at the middle manager: one sees the middle manager as a person who adds little value and resists change, and the other sees the middle manager as a key part in implementing change in an organization. Balogun discusses a study that was conducted on middle managers during a one-year transition period in an organization, including structural, operational, and cultural changes. This study found that, as “change brokers,” middle managers fulfill four roles: undertaking personal change, helping others through change, implementing necessary changes in their department, and moving the company forward. A simple and perfect example of when I experienced a colleague playing the role of intermediary in the change that occurred last spring in a new restaurant where I had started serving. The restaurant was only about 6 months old when the owners began discussing the current lax dress code and decided to implement stricter, more professional dress code with more rules and more limitations on what servers could wear to work. Obviously, this met with some resistance from the waiters who had worked in the restaurant since day one, and the implementation of the change was passed on from the owners, through the general manager, to the assistant manager, who was most responsible for ensuring that the the changes have been respected.