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Senior executives in healthcare organizations increasingly display preference for a closer handling of operational levels, bypassing middle managers, and de-emphasizing the need to cultivate the next cadre of leaders, creating the potential for leadership and performance gaps. The authors argue that middle managers are a vital resource for healthcare organizations and review the benefits for including them in leadership development and succession planning programs. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Current theories and common practices in addition to data collected from government sources (e.g. BLS), business and industry surveys and reports (e.g. Moody’s, Witt/Kieffer, Deloitte, American Hospital Association) are used to classify the roles, skills, and strategic value of middle managers in healthcare organizations.

The combination of a greater executive span with less hierarchical depth creates a dual effect of devaluing middle management, and a decrease in middle managers’ autonomy. Healthcare middle managers who stay away or lay low further trigger perceptions of low expectations leading to low morale and high levels of stress. Others become hypereffective or develop exit strategies. Major problems are: rising turnover costs; and insufficient attention to succession planning, internal promotion, and leadership development.

The outcomes of this study are useful for management development, particularly at times of change. Practitioners and researchers can have a better understanding of the value of middle managers and their development needs as well as the factors and dynamics that can influence their motivation and affect retention.

Understanding and implementing the ideas developed in this paper by healthcare organizations and other companies can lead to a drastic change in the current perceptions of the importance of middle managers and should lead to long-term retention, well-being, and extrinsic benefits for both the company and its employees.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

The combination of a greater executive span with less hierarchical depth creates a dual effect of devaluing middle management, and a decrease in middle managers’ autonomy. Healthcare middle managers who stay away or lay low further trigger perceptions of low expectations leading to low morale and high levels of stress. Others become hypereffective or develop exit strategies. Major problems are rising turnover costs; and insufficient attention to succession planning, internal promotion, and leadership development.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

The purpose of this paper is to validate the number and order of leadership roles and identify the personality traits which trigger the choice of leadership roles.

A survey addressing classification and measurement questions in each of the competing values framework (CVF) quadrants was administered to a sample of managerial leaders across organizations. Multidimensional scaling representing the underlying CVF dimensions in a spatial arrangement was conducted with input derived from LISREL, which was also used to test the degree‐of‐fit between the CVF roles and quadrants as well as to examine the relationships between personality traits and leadership roles.

The results produced a remarkable synthesis of two separate fields of study within a single competing quadrants grid confirming the causal paths from traits to the compressed CVF latent variables.

This study raises important questions about the causal effects of personality traits and situational contingencies on the choice of leadership roles.

The new awareness of precursors to CVF roles calls for significantly shifting the focus of leadership training and education efforts. Leadership development strategies designed to improve current managerial strengths must also target specific weaknesses and their psychological underpinnings.

The paper demonstrates the efficacy of the CVF and at the same time draws more robust conclusions about how traits affect the choice of leadership roles, how they influence the extent of managerial effectiveness and to what extent managerial choice of roles is conscious or just a stimulus response.

The aim of this paper is to examine leadership styles among middle‐level managers in social and health care using the leadership role definitions developed by Robert Quinn et al..

The data were obtained by means of a postal survey sent to middle‐line managers in social and health care services in municipalities and municipal federations within the responsibility area of one university hospital in Finland. The survey was sent to 703 managers, the response rate was 62 percent. Leadership styles differences were measured according to gender, professional background, activity sector, age, work experience and unit size. To determine statistical significance, t‐test was used.

Leadership roles of middle‐level managers were evenly distributed on a relatively high level. Statistically significant differences found in leadership styles were related to gender, professional background, activity sector and unit size. Leadership styles stressed intra‐organizational activities, while extra‐organizational roles received less attention.

Using Quinn's model to describe leadership roles provides one view of the type of leadership style adopted by social and health care managers in a situation involving several ongoing reforms including those addressing management practices. Previously, Quinn's model has been widely employed to depict leadership roles in business management but rarely to model management in social and health care as in this paper.