Employee involvement and the middle manager: saboteur or scapegoat?

Abstract

The results of a study of managers' attitudes to employee involvement are discussed. Contrary to a number of existing studies, it has been found that middle managers' attitudes are no more negative than those of senior managers. As hypothesized, managers' intentions to support employee involvement were found to be inversely related to recent managerial job loss and positively related to managers' experience of employee involvement. A positive relationship was revealed between recent delayering and intentions to support the involvement of employees. It was also revealed that there exists a complex curvilinear relationship between managers' perceptions of their own empowerment and their attitudes to employee involvement.