Spelar det någon roll? : En kvalitativ studie av hur mellanchefer upplever en rollförändring

Sammanfattning: This study aims to show how mid-level managers experience a role change while in a bigger organizational change. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with ten mid-level managers in a wholesale company with approximately 650 employees. The study is about roles and role change and how a middle manager experience a change in roles. It aims to give a new contribution to management- and organization studies and to contribute with action-advices to practitioner in work life. The theoretical starting points are Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaughs (1988) theory about role exit. The result from the interviews was analyzed with this theory and the main conclusions are: A forced change of roles for a mid-level manager can show the same steps in role exiting as the examples in Ebaughs (1988) study. Throughout the change, the manager’s experiences doubt, seeking alternatives, the turning point and creating an Ex-role. The time it took, the managers to go through all these steps varied. The company’s actions created a bigger doubt than necessary. The fact that the company waited for up to two months to declare the new roles for the middle managers created most doubt. A clearer purpose, more information about the coming roles and more information about why the change was necessary could have shortened the time it took for the managers to get through all the role-exiting steps and some role-uncertainty could have been avoided.