Championing the Middle Manager

In an era of change management, Jeanie Duck, an expert in the field of organizational change, writes the Perspective "Let Middle Managers Manage." In it, she presents counterintuitive findings that make a case for the much maligned and downsized middle manager and she reminds CEOs that middle managers are still indispensable for most organizations, even in an age of employee empowerment and flat organizational structures.

 

BCG Insights & Highlights

  • BCG expands its value management focus through the acquisition of Holt Planning Associates
  • BCG creates its first worldwide values statement
  • Mark Blaxill and Tom Hout's "The Fallacy of the Overhead Quick Fix" is published in the Harvard Business Review
  • Offices opened: Frankfurt, Hong Kong
  • Consultants = 773

World News

  • After U.N. sanctions fail to force Iraqi troops to withdraw from Kuwait, a Western military coalition led by the United States crushes the Iraqi military and liberates Kuwait in just 100 hours. Retreating Iraqi forces set the oil fields on fire
  • The Soviet Union is dissolved. Boris Yeltsin assumes command of the 11-member Commonwealth of Independent States
  • South Africa's Parliament repeals the country's apartheid laws
  • The Warsaw Pact is dissolved
  • France agrees to sign the 1968 treaty restricting the spread of nuclear weapons
  • A Bronze Age man is found frozen in a Swiss glacier