Middle managers are often much-maligned individuals who are seen as doing little but push paper around and try and make themselves as important as possible.  Of course, the reality is somewhat different, with middle managers playing a crucial role in things like innovation, idea management, ethics, and so on.

A recent study from the UBC Sauder School of Business suggests that middle managers are also vital in smoothing over any mistreatment of workers by senior managers.

The paper builds upon previous work that has shown that when employees are treated badly by senior managers, they often react negatively, whether through increased absenteeism, stealing from their employer, or gossiping about colleagues.  The authors argue that middle managers are seldom impartial bystanders in this and can often take the side of their subordinates, and try to help them out secretly.

Righting the wrongs

This is especially common when the manager has a strong moral code, as they regard it as their duty to right the wrongs they see, while also trying to compensate the victims of the wrongdoing out of view of the senior managers.

The researchers interviewed a number of middle managers at a European publishing firm and found that so-called “Robin Hood’ism” was common.

This was then followed up with employees from countries around the world to try and understand whether they both experienced this in their own workplace and were aware that middle managers were doing it.

This analysis found that it was a practice that was far from unusual, with middle managers often striving to compensate for unfairness, whether through giving extra vacation time to assigning equipment that employees could take home.  This redressing of the balance was especially common when workers were treated poorly on an interpersonal level rather than on a bureaucratic one.

Moral compass

“Managers minded if a salary wasn’t the highest, or if bureaucratic procedures were a problem,” the researchers say.  “But when a victim got cheated out of an outcome like a promotion, or was mistreated interpersonally or insulted, that especially seemed to really trigger managers into action to do something about it. That’s when the Robin Hoods really get inspired.”

As we can perhaps expect, this benevolence is not always applied equally, with it most prevalent among managers who have a high moral compass.

“That gave us additional data that managers’ moral concerns really do underlie robin hoodism,” the researchers say. “It’s an interesting paradox, because some people might view what Robin Hood did as unethical — and yet managers who do it actually see themselves as doing the right thing.”

It’s a situation in which the middle managers might know that something is wrong, but they are in no position to really punish the transgressor.  So they try to find some other way to right the wrong in a way that flies under the radar of their managers.  As a result, the researchers believe that even if senior managers discover the presence of such benevolent middle managers, they would do well to turn a blind eye.

“When a senior leader has done something that’s offensive or mistreats an employee, it’s really important that the manager has a bit of wiggle room to be able to fix it. It’s really a way of absorbing some of the mistreatment that can happen, even inadvertently,” they say.