Moving down the Line? The Shifting Boundary between Middle and First-Line Management

Abstract

Much of the recent debate about changes to middle and first-line management treats these changes in isolation, rather than as inter-connected aspects of wider changes to management as a whole. This paper reports evidence from a survey of the first-line manager role in 135 organisations in the UK which shows how first-line managers have acquired some business management responsibilities previously associated with middle managers, but that these have supplemented, rather than replaced, first-line managers' core responsibility for performance-oriented supervision. Consequently, as well as first-line managers who remain primarily supervisors, there are those who are, additionally, performance managers, customer/client service managers and budget holders. On the basis of this evidence, it is argued that there has been re-distribution of managerial work and responsibilities, with a re-drawing of the traditional boundary between middle and first-line managers. Whilst some business management tasks are now shared between middle and first-line managers, routine operational supervision is increasingly concentrated in the first-line manager role. The implications for how organisations recruit, train, develop and reward first-line managers in this new, expanded role and how first-line managers themselves handle its demands and pressures are discussed.