Have post-bureaucratic changes occurred in managerial work?

SummaryThis study examines if managerial work below the top management level has changed to become more post-bureaucratic. This should be indicated by less preoccupation with administrative work and a more dialogue-oriented contact pattern. The empirical findings support the existence of a new contact pattern, but are unable to provide evidence of less administrative work as previous studies of middle managers. However, this does not necessarily rule out the existence of post-bureaucratic managerial work for middle managers, rather this raises some questions regarding the conceptualization of post-bureaucratic managerial work. It is thus possible that managers working at different levels in a post-bureaucratic organization have quite different experiences, and that the less administrative work is more feasible for top than middle managers. Future research is encouraged to explore this issue. In addition, the consistent findings of middle managers preoccupation with administrative work suggest a need to redirect attention from variation to commonalities in managerial work, and from describing commonalities to explaining them.