Downsizing and the hyper-effective manager: The shifting importance of managerial roles during organizational transformation

This article describes how managerial roles change in importance during periods of significant organizational transition. An interdisciplinary approach reveals that (1) the competing values framework is a useful framework for examining this question; (2) the transformational roles increase as expected during downsizing; (3) three of four transactional roles also increase during downsizing. This last counterintuitive finding is illuminated by the interdisciplinary model developed. Overall, managers show significant evidence of hyper-effectivity—a state of high performance that is likely to be unsustainable in the long term. Implications for human resource practitioners and researchers are discussed.