Heroes or Villains? Recasting Middle Management Roles, Processes, and Behaviours
这篇特刊导言回顾了中层管理研究的基础与进展，构建了涵盖组织角色、协调过程和能动行为的分析框架，并指出新组织形式、技术和中层管理者需求的变化如何影响这些主题，为未来研究指明方向。
Abstract Middle management ranks are once again being questioned by scholars and practitioners alike. This introduction to the special issue represents a timely reference point for consolidating, reviving, and guiding the next wave of researchers seeking to engage this debate. We review the foundations and recent advances in middle management research and develop an organizing framework in terms of middle management's organizational roles, coordination processes, and agentic behaviours. We also identify how new ways of organizing, technology, and middle manager needs are changing to shape each of these themes. The collection of works we synthesize in this introduction offer theoretical advances and empirical evidence on how these changes affect middle management roles, processes, and behaviours. We conclude by mapping out promising research avenues for future research in middle management.