It’s fairly well established that the culture of an organization flows from the top, with managers taking their cue on how to behave from those above them.  New research from Columbia Business School highlights how middle managers are especially likely to treat those below them as they themselves are treated.

This is especially so when those middle managers suffer from a loss of power and therefore feel like they lack control over valuable resources.  The study found that so-called “informational fairness” was especially important, as this played a big role in how middle managers were able to explain decisions to those below them.  This in turn cascades down the organization and affects how supervisors are able to communicate with their own reports.

Trickling down

The researchers gathered data from a couple of studies to explore when the trickle-down effect is more or less likely to occur.  In one study, for instance, they explored how supervisors who experience varying degrees of power subsequently treated their subordinates, especially as a function of any informational fairness they receive from their own managers.

The second study then involved an experiment whereby volunteers were placed in a supervisory role and given varying degrees of power and informational fairness to see how they responded to their own simulated subordinates.

In both experiments, it emerged that manager’s behavior towards their team was indeed strongly influenced by both their sense of power and the information they received from their bosses.  This was especially so among lower-level managers who had relatively little power.  This lower sense of power meant that they were more likely to take cues as to their own behavior from those above them.

Therefore, if managers don’t feel like they have much power, it’s especially important that they are themselves treated well by their own manager so that bad behavior doesn’t cascade down through the organization.