A Case Study on the Evolution and Consequences of Middle Man in T Company

This paper tried to discuss the core social networks of general manager and the “middle man” which might hoodwink general manager (GM) from the employees through immersive observation and inductive inference. The author studied 3 successors with their subordinates of a fortune 500 company for 16 years. It can be concluded that the middle man emerge from nobody but a subordinate of some GM by frequent formal communications and personal interactions and eventually gets trusted and promoted to high level position. The reliance of GM on middle man in emotions establishes middleman’s personal authority by monopolizing communication channels of GM, and thereby hastening, delaying or influencing decision making process of the GM. The middle man grasps ability of pursuing self-interests when turning into “the real” decision maker by controlling communication process, thus might have negative impact on operational performance and career of GM.