Research conducted by Wharton Business School management professor Ethan Mollick suggests that middle managers are the key productivity enhancing variable especially for knowledge-based companies.

“The often overlooked and sometimes-maligned middle managers matter. They are not interchangeable parts in an organization,” Mollick says.

Worker trust and confidence in senior management have fallen over the past two years and, unless reversed, present a major threat to future corporate competitiveness, according to a soon-to-be released survey of nearly 13,000 workers conducted by Watson Wyatt Worldwide.