Exploring middle management (de)evolution in the times of new ways of working: a sociomaterial approach

New ways of working, hailed as the ‘future of work’, involve entanglements between the social and the material that bring to the fore discussions around how we work, an intersection that is essential to better understand the implications of new ways of working. This monograph hence poses the question of such implications for middle managers, important social agents in the organization, as they try to ‘assemble’ different aspects of hybrid working– ‘time, space, digital technology’. Yet, exactly what hybrid working implies for their skills, function and role in the organization is currently subject to debate and experimentation. To that end, the objective of this monograph is twofold. On one side it seeks to move towards delineating a field of research on conceptualizing new ways of working by exploring the phenomenon, while on the other side it seeks to study different aspects of the implications they bring for managerial work and roles. Through empirical analysis, given the specific environment and the multitude of objectives that each particular study of this monograph aims to satisfy, this monograph demonstrates that new ways of working play a critical role in mediating human-to-human relationships as well as collaboration and interaction, further shaping social actors’ agency, showing hence the many ways to which managerial functions and role are susceptible to the sociomateriality of work, thereby enriching the scientific dialogue on these emerging topics.