330 Int. J. Innovation and Learning, Vol. 1, No.

4, 2004

The competent middle manager: framing individual

knowledge in north-east Italian SMEs

Arnaldo Camuffo
Department of Economics and Business,
University of Padua, Via del Santo, 33, 35123 Padua, Italy
E-mail: arnaldo.camuffo@unipd.it

Anna Comacchio*
Department of Business Administration,
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, San Trovaso,
1075 30123 Venice, Italy
E-mail: comacchio@unive.it
*Corresponding author

Abstract: In SMEs, where organisational structures and management systems

are usually informal and where some key people represent the main and
sometimes exclusive repository of knowledge, studying individuals, analysing
the nature of their knowledge, identifying their personal characteristics and
how these relate to individual and business performance, constitute a strategic
area of research (at the moment almost unexplored), potentially rich of
implications in terms of human resource management systems’ design.

This paper represents a first attempt in this direction of research. It uses

competency modelling for assessing the nature and types of individual
knowledge developed in SMEs, presenting research results on a country, Italy,
where SMEs represent the backbone of the economy. They show that ‘best’
(most effective) middle managers perceive their organisational role as wider
than their colleagues and have a repertoire of competencies comparatively more
aligned with firm’s expectations and requirements.

Keywords: human resource management; knowledge management; middle

manager; competency modelling; organisational capabilities; SMEs.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Camuffo, A. and

Comacchio, A. (2004) ‘The competent middle manager: framing individual
knowledge in north-east Italian SMEs’, Int. J. Innovation and Learning, Vol. 1,
No. 4, pp.330–350.

Biographical notes: Arnaldo Camuffo is Full Professor of Management at the

University of Padua. He holds a PhD in Management from the Ca’Foscari
University of Venice, a Master of Science in Management from the Sloan
School of Management of M.I.T., and a BS in Management from the
Ca’Foscari University of Venice. His research concerns organisational
structures and processes, work organisation, and the management of human
resources in the automotive, textile-clothing and eyewear industries. He has
published essays, books and papers in Italy and abroad. She is Principal
Investigator of the International Motor Vehicle Program of MIT and Research
Affiliate at the GERPISA-Université d’Evry Val d’Essonne, Paris.

Copyright © 2004 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

 The competent middle manager: framing individual knowledge 331

Anna Comacchio is Full Professor of Organisational design at the Ca’Foscari

University of Venice. He holds a PhD in Management from the Ca’Foscari
University of Venice, and a BS in Management from the Ca’Foscari University
of Venice. The area of interests are organisational behaviour, organisational
design, the management of human resources. Main focuses are the tourism
sector, competency based approach and the organisational problems of product
innovation. She has published essays, books and papers in Italy and abroad.
She is the Scientific Coordinator of the EU – Leonardo da Vinci Project
“Organisational Approach of Self-controlled Instrument for qualification
demand in SME – OASI”.

1 The role of individual knowledge in SMEs

An increasing body of research maintains that, in the knowledge economy, knowledge,

not other assets, represents the critical resource for both business and individuals [1].
Thus, in recent years, the issue of how knowledge is created, diffused, reproduced,
and protected within and between firms has probably become the hottest topic in
management research and practice.
For large, international enterprises, this topic has been worked out in terms of
knowledge management systems applied to the different business processes and functions
(new product development, order to delivery, customer satisfaction and retention, etc.)
emphasising how organisational structures and information and communication
technologies can foster knowledge creation and diffusion.
For small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), however, the issue of how
knowledge represents a key strategic assets for business development and success, has
taken a different meaning and, we think, has to be approached differently.
Certainly, there is an interesting body of research that has dealt with the role of the
environment (externalities, networking and the like in the so-called industrial districts or
clusters) in shaping SMEs’ knowledge endowment. But this is not the only aspect.
In SMEs, where organisational structures and management systems are usually
informal and where some key people like the owner, the entrepreneur or a few other
managers play the most relevant roles, individuals represent the main and sometimes
exclusive repository of knowledge, whose personal, tacit nature [2] tends, therefore, to be
dominant.
Studying these individuals, analysing the nature of their knowledge, identifying their
personal characteristics and how these relate to individual and business performance,
constitute an unexplored area, potentially rich of implications in terms of human resource
management, personal development and organisational learning.
This paper are a first attempt in this direction of research. It uses competency
modelling for assessing the nature and types of individual knowledge. It proposes a field
study on a sample of successful SMEs in a country, Italy, where SMEs represent the
backbone of the economy. It focuses on middle managers, who represent typical key
roles/people in SMEs.
The evidence provided by the data supports the hypothesis that there is a positive
relationship between individual performance and individual knowledge (as measured by
individual competency endowment) and, thus, that people and the way in which talent is
recruited, developed, and compensated, indeed are key strategic factors for SMEs,
332 A. Camuffo and A. Comacchio

provided this way is designed appropriately, implemented consistently, and linked with
the relevant performance measures. The paper proposes a cross-firm competency model
for middle managers working in north east Italian SMEs, identifying the competencies
required to successfully cover those roles. It also suggests that competency based
methodologies can represent an interesting approach for designing human resource
management systems in SMEs.

2 Research concept and hypothesis

Even though individuals at all levels constitute strategic resources and are at the basis of
a firm’s competitive advantage [3], some scholars [4,5] have highlighted that middle
managers can be comparatively more relevant, and, in a way, essential for knowledge
creation and diffusion. Nonaka maintains that middle managers work as the linking pins
between the local, tacit knowledge that characterises the shopfloor, the sales process, or
the other operational activities, and the codified, articulated knowledge (i.e. the plans and
programmes, the methodologies for defining and monitoring the economic and financial
targets, etc.) that characterise SMEs owners or top managers [6]. According to this
viewpoint, in SMEs, middle managers play a key interface role between the ‘top’ and the
‘bottom’ of the organisation, ‘bridging’ data, information and knowledge coming from
different organisational actors and loci [7]. From this perspective, the presence of talented
and committed people at this intermediate organisational level represents not only an
important source of organisational performance [8], but also a major challenge for
SMEs [9].
The study presented in this paper wishes to address this issue and intends to identify
what personal characteristics (competencies) are required to cover middle management
roles effectively.
Moreover, it wishes to test the three following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1: In SMEs, the ‘best’ (most effective) middle managers perceive their
role and have a repertoire of competencies comparatively more aligned with firm’s
expectations and requirements.
The idea underlying hypothesis 1 is that the most effective middle managers:
• possess a set of competencies which is comparatively more coherent with what firms
need
• are better able to interpret what firms expect from them in terms of managerial role
• are strongly committed to organisational values and goals.
Hypothesis 2: In SMEs, the ‘best’ (most effective) middle managers have
comparatively more competencies.
The idea underlying hypothesis 2 is that the most effective middle managers possess a set
of competencies which is comparatively richer (in quantitative terms). This implies on
the one hand that recruiting should be targeted towards the acquisitions of the most
talented (i.e. those who possess a wider and richer range of competencies) and, on the
other hand, that training and development policies and programmes should be geared
 The competent middle manager: framing individual knowledge 333

towards the relevant competencies. Finally, vertical internal mobility (careers), appraisal
systems and compensation policies should be focused on such competencies, too.
Hypothesis 3: In SMEs the ‘best’ (most effective) middle managers have
comparatively a wider variety of competencies.
This hypothesis 3 directly follows from hypothesis 2 and reflects the idea according to
which the most effective middle managers possess a set of competencies which is
comparatively more articulated and diversified (in qualitative terms).

3 Research design and methodology

The research design underlying the field project on which this paper is based, is
characterised by the individual level of analysis (i.e. focus on individual knowledge) and
by a contingent approach (i.e. focus on situated knowledge depending on context).
The study also adopts the typical competency-based research methodologies and
tools, adjusting and developing (given the focus of the study on SMEs and middle
managers) the conventional competency-based approach originally proposed by
Boyatzis [10,11] and colleagues [12], approach which, instead, focused mainly on top
managers of large multinational companies.
The paper proposes a cross-firm competency model of middle managers working in
Italian SMEs, thus adopting a single job or job family approach to competency
modelling. The possibility to model competencies on a multiple firm basis lies on the
assumption that the firms under analysis operate in a specific geographic area, north-east
of Italy, represent a cluster, share the same development process, have significant
similarities in terms of organisational structures, are homogeneous as concern the
business strategy. These firms are particularly interesting also because their flexibility,
efficiency, responsiveness to client demand, people commitment, and ‘lean organisation’
have recently made of them one of the most study example of local development in
Western Economies [13–21].
The research methodology comprised the use of a multiplicity of competency based
tools:
• Structured questionnaires to collect quantitative data on firms, organisational units
and role holders
• Repertory Grid (RG): a semi-structured interview conducted with the role holders’
supervisor [22]
• Skill Profile (SP): a structured inventory of about 60 skills translated and adapted
from the Executive Skill Profile [23,24]. It was submitted to the evaluation of both
role holders and their supervisors
• Behavioural Event Interview (BEI): an established technique of in-depth interview
based on the ‘critical incident technique’ [25]. A codification process was applied,
referring to Boyatzis [10] competency dictionary (22 competencies clustered in three
groups: action, human resource management and analytical reasoning) [10,25].
334 A. Camuffo and A. Comacchio

This articulated methodology allowed

• to investigate the diverse aspects of people’s knowledge: managerial competencies
(BEI and RG) and technical skills (SP)
• to merge the bottom-up perspectives (role holder) and the top-down ones
(supervisor)
• to use complementary data for cross checking the results.
We tested our research hypothesis choosing a sample of 46 outstanding SMEs of
north-east Italy. These were picked among those with above average performance in
terms of growth, key financials and competitive reputation.
This sample of firms participated at a two-year research project that comprised two
rounds of field work (1997 and 1998), both funded by the Italian Ministry of Labour and
the EU. One side-result of the project would be that of benchmarking competency sets for
middle managers in order to support labour policies in less performing areas.

Figure 1 Research design and methodology

The terrain for fieldwork was defined as follows. Within each firm, three main
organisational units were targeted, among the others: administration, manufacturing and
product development. These three functional areas were considered the most relevant
with respect to the aim of the research, given their impact on firms’ performance and the
nature of technological and organisational changes they have undergone. For each firm,
all the middle managers operating within each unit were evaluated, classified in best,
average and poor performers and interviewed. In total 310 people were studied
(31 project managers, 31 administrative middle managers and 248 production
supervisors). Also their direct bosses (83 people) were interviewed.
 The competent middle manager: framing individual knowledge 335

4 The sample: firms, organisational units and middle managers

The majority of the firms analysed, both in the first and second round of field work,
operates in the main industrial sectors of the north-east region of Italy (clothing,
mechanical, wood, leather), are small–medium sized, have an entrepreneurial profile, are
family owned, hold competitive advantage in each specific market segment (some of
them are leader suppliers in a niche, others are mass custom producers), operates in
international markets and are certified ISO 9000. Another trait in common among the
firms is the corporate culture. It is centred on values like company loyalty, pride in the
product, working climate and propensity to workload (the tendency of workers and
supervisors to work more hours than the contractual time, for instance when there is a
breakdown to resolve, or a special delivery to a customer).
Hard and soft data confirm that, even if there are relative differences about the size,
the sector and role of the firms within the supply chain (some companies produce for
mass final market, others are niche specialists; others are first-tier suppliers of
multinationals), the organisations analysed share a similar economic developing model,
the same cultural and social context, and they still converge on some competitive
performance areas (like flexible response to market changes, cost, customisation).
For each organisational unit, by interviews and a structured questionnaires, we
identified a unit’s main objectives and its organisational, technological and people traits:
• Objectives. Production-efficiency/flexibility, administration-accuracy/control,
product development-quality/time to market.
• ICT technology. In her product development units almost every engineer has his own
PC working with CAD 2D, and some companies are adopting CAD 3D, in order to
enhance the effectiveness of the prototyping phase, administrative offices have rather
traditional ICT supports like standardised accounting packages working on isolated
systems, manufacturing units have introduced innovations like CAM, CNC and in
some cases robots.
• Organisational traits. Units have the same agile structure (2–3 levels). As regards to
coordination mechanisms, production and administration rely on more traditional
hierarchical tools, whereas product development units use teamwork associated with
hierarchical mechanisms.
• People. Within the units analysed managers have different levels of education
(increasing from production, to administration and product development), but for all
of them the tacit technical knowledge is very important (a very limited number of
organisations have training programs, mainly they rely on training on the job).
• Culture. Production is cost centred, administration is regulation centred, product
development is problem centred.
Finally considering the middle managers profile, as shown in Table 1, they have an
average age over 35 years, their firm seniority is very high, as the role seniority. Basically
the data show a professional profile, specially the production supervisors’ one,
characterised by modest firm and job mobility and by know-how accumulated mainly by
‘learning by doing’.
336 A. Camuffo and A. Comacchio

Table 1 Research sample: middle managers’ profile

Production M.M. Administrative M.M. Technical M.M.

Local native 87.9% 72% 48.3%
Average age 39.4 years 35 years 37 years
Average firm tenure 15.5 years 9.7 years 9 years
Average job tenure 7 years 6 years 4 years
Average span of control 35 14 4/5
High School or Univ. education 33% 82% 100%
or diploma

Best performer middle managers best performers in all the units, have on average, have
higher average age, firm seniority and job seniority. They have also higher education and
the unit under their control, is bigger than the one coordinated on average, by colleagues
in corresponding units [26].

5 Middle managers’ alignment: the skill profile analysis

We tested the alignment between best performers perceptions of their skills and firms’
expectations by skill profile analysis. First of all, from the interviews, we built, first of
all, two types of skill profiles: the expected and the perceived one, merging the bottom-up
perspectives of middle managers (perceived profile) and the top-down requirements of
the firms (expected profile). Secondly, by gap analysis we measured the alignment
between best performers perspective about the role they should cover and the skill they
possess to play their role (perceived role and skills) and the firm perspective about them
(expected role and skills) [27].
Considering the production middle managers, best supervisors and their firm gave the
same importance key to the same skill clusters:
• efficiency skills: being able to operate under the pressure of deadlines
• ‘making’ skills: using tacit technical know-how to solve problems
• mentoring skills: managing and developing people.
But, while the profile of average performers almost completely overlap the firm’s one,
the best performers gave a higher score to some clusters like goal setting, action and
information gathering [28].
These results, firstly, suggest that the supervisor’s role, centred on ‘making’ skills,
sustains the accumulation of know-how on production processes and permits flexible
problem solving and efficiency. Secondly the mentoring skills of supervisors, associated
with tacit technical skills, are important not only for a good climate (low turn over and
low absenteeism), but, most of all, for knowledge transfer. Thirdly, managers’ alignment
with firms’ priorities (same relative importance given to each cluster) allows
organisations to economise coordination costs, like costs related to hierarchical
mechanisms or standardisation, and to reduce the distortion and delays of the
communication process. Finally the gap between best middle managers’ score and that of
 The competent middle manager: framing individual knowledge 337

the firms’ (with regards to action and reasoning clusters), seems to indicate that best
performer are more committed than average and poor and are ready to assume more
responsibility.

Figure 2 Production middle managers. Perceived and expected role for B/A/P performers

Considering the product development best middle managers, the two skill profile
(top-down e bottom-up) overlap almost perfectly regarding the following skills:
• organisation skills: action and relationship
• initiative
• project management skills
• analytical skills: find and share, with manufacturing and other functions, the
knowledge necessary to assess and select the right projects and to develop them.
These results reveal that middle managers are involved in knowledge management
activities based mainly on individual know-how about new products rather then on
organisational database. At the same time, best project leaders play a complementary and
strategic task of coordinators, responsible for the development of people. These skills
allow them to find and share the knowledge necessary to assess and select the right
projects and to develop product’s innovations coherent with the demand of customers.
338 A. Camuffo and A. Comacchio

As already discussed regarding production supervisors, best project managers

evaluation of their role is higher than the one of their supervisors, this gap could be a
signal of a high personal involvement in the role.

Figure 3 Product development middle managers. Perceived and expected role for B/A/P
performers

Finally considering the administrative middle managers, best performers’ skill profile
is more aligned with the evaluation of the firm than that of average and poor
performers. Moreover there is a gap among role holders’ profile and firms’ perception
especially for the cluster initiative and action, which reveals a ‘bottom-up’ demand
for more responsibility and development. From the organisational point of view,
this gap can be a problem in those situations where administrative offices are still
bureaucratic units, where there is no room for commitment and professional
development. On the other hand this identification with the role can become a key
resource in those organisations where information technologies and organisational
changes require change agents. This is particularly true considering that the middle
managers, with higher evaluation of their role are those with low firm seniority and high
education, in other words those more capable and able of supporting organisational and
technological changes.
 The competent middle manager: framing individual knowledge 339

Figure 4 Skill profiles of administrative middle managers. Perceived and expected role for B/A/P
performers

6 The competent middle managers

In this section, managerial competencies are analysed through an in-depth study of the
transcriptions’ results of the behavioural event interviews [16,29,30]. Qualitative
information were transformed by thematic analysis [11]. It is worth highlighting that, as
thematic analysis is sensitive to the quality of the raw data and sampling decisions, as
regard to the middle managers under analysis (our unit of analysis), we interviewed the
entire population, within each unit.
Competencies were coded using the Boyatzis’ dictionary and two types of analysis
and data processing were carried over. The first one aimed to test hypothesis 2, thus we
identified the set of competencies of most effective middle managers against others, from
a quantitative point of view. For this purpose we evaluated the variety of competency,
measured considering the range of behaviours by which a competency is demonstrated by
a manager and can be coded by a researcher [31].
The second type of data processing was used to identify the competency model
(threshold and distinctive competencies) of each group of middle managers in order to
test hypothesis 3, studying how competency endowment of best performers is articulated
and how it is different from that of other middle managers.
340 A. Camuffo and A. Comacchio

With regards to the variety of competency, the average number of indicators per
interview has been calculated. Considering that each competency of the Boyatzis code
book can be demonstrated and coded by several behavioural indicators, the number of
indicators signal both different competencies and different ways of behaving the same
competency.
The average number of indicators of best, average and poor performers has been
compared. The comparison by ranking, in each unit, highlights that best performers, have
more behavioural indicators than average and poor performers (Figure 5). Data from the
analysis of variety of competency confirms hypothesis 2, demonstrating that personal
endowment of best performer is more rich (from a quantitative point of view) than the
one of average and poor performers.

Figure 5 Number of indicators

In order to test hypothesis 3, it was analysed how best performers personal knowledge
is more articulated than others, identifying the threshold competencies, i.e. those
characterising average role holders; and the distinctive ones (supervisors), i.e. those more
frequent among best performers [32].
Considering production middle managers, three out of the seven threshold
competencies are of the cluster Action (efficiency orientation, initiative and planning), the
others are people management competencies (Tables 2 and 3).
 The competent middle manager: framing individual knowledge 341

Table 2 Supervisors competency model

Frequency % Best Competency

Competencies Total Best Average Aver. + Poor Type
Efficiency orientation 33.1 35.2 34.2 1.1 Threshold
Empathy 22.4 26.2 22.5 1.3 Threshold
Initiative 17.4 20.6 17.2 1.3 Threshold
Planning 16.2 18.9 14.4 1.3 Threshold
Developing others 16.0 18.9 14.0 1.3 Threshold
Self-confidence 13.8 17.5 12.3 1.5 Threshold
Persuasiveness 13.6 16.6 12.3 1.4 Threshold
Use of concepts 13.1 17.5 11.1 1.6 Distinctive
Attention to detail 8.9 12.1 7.9 1.7 Distinctive
Group management 8.9 11.0 8.9 1.4
Pattern recognition 5.6 5.6 5.3 1.0
Social objectivity 4.9 7.3 2.8 1.9
Using technology 4.9 6.2 3.8 1.5
Self-control 4.3 3.7 4.7 0.8
Networking 3.6 5.1 2.6 1.7 Distinctive
Negotiating 3.1 2.5 4.0 0.8
System thinking 2.6 3.7 2.2 1.7 Distinctive
Flexibility 2.2 3.4 1.8 2.0 Distinctive
Oral communication 1.3 2.0 0.8 2.0
Quantitative analysis 0.4 0.8 0.2 6.1
Written communication 0.2 0.3 0.2 2.0
Theory building 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.0

Table 3 Threshold competencies and distinctive competencies. The supervisor competency

model

Threshold Distinctive
Efficiency orientation Planning Attention to details Use of concepts
Initiative Developing others Flexibility System thinking
Empathy Self-confidence Networking

The competence efficiency orientation, is the most frequent, it is the ability to be goal
oriented and to try to apply continuous improvements, paying particular attention to costs
of actions undertaken. Moreover, middle managers take the initiative in order to solve a
problem as quickly as possible or to improve a plant performance. Planning competency
is the ability to organise people and material, it is thus a short-term programming activity
with a time horizon of one day or, at the most, a week.
342 A. Camuffo and A. Comacchio

The other side of the supervisors’ knowledge is the human resource management
ability. They know the personality of each team member, therefore they are usually able
to analyse every weak sign like the glance of a worker and understand which problem it
is signalling. This empathy, together with the technical competence, is functional for
maintaining the socio-technical system of a production unit in the short as well as in the
long term. In fact, even if the main objective of a supervisor is the short-term efficiency,
by managing people they demonstrate a long-term attitude, also developing some young
workers by mentoring.
These competencies have indeed guaranteed the required performance in the past, just
as they are doing at present. But this, in some sense, traditional profile does not coincide
with that of the best performers which possess the most frequent competencies but also
demonstrated a set of different competencies based on the ability to reduce uncertainty
but at the same time to be flexible, and are able on gate-keeping and analytical reasoning.
The frequency of these distinctive competencies is not as high as the threshold
competencies. The low frequency and the ‘intellectual’ nature of part of the distinctive
competencies suggests that they are weak signs of some changes in the role of production
supervisors. From this standpoint, those competencies can be considered as emerging
competencies [33], related to new organisational and technological contexts, where
supervisors manage not only material and people but also information coming from
inside units or from outside counterparts like customers or suppliers (attention to detail,
networking), where experience should not only be transferred tacitly but also be codified
(use of concepts, system thinking), where supervisors should be more open to change
(flexibility).
With regard to the competency model of administrative managers, the threshold
performance depends on human resource management competencies. In order to control
‘labour intensive’ processes only partially standardised, administrative middle managers
should be able to create a good climate (empathy) and the necessary level of expertise
(development of others).

Table 4 The competency model of administrative managers

Frequency % Best Competency

Competencies Total Best Average Aver. + Poor Type
Efficiency orientation 32.2 10.5 18.6 0.6 Threshold
Initiative 26.9 11.3 11.1 1.2 Threshold
Planning 24.3 4.5 10.3 0.5
Use of concepts 20.0 8.6 5.3 1.9 Distinctive
Persuasiveness 17.4 4.6 4.3 1.2 Threshold
Attention to detail 15.6 9.7 6.4 10
Self-confidence 14.8 8.0 11.5 0.9 Threshold
Using technology 13.0 2.8 3.8 0.7
Empathy 12.2 3.6 6.4 0.7 Threshold
Developing others 6.9 2.4 3.2 1.0 Threshold
Pattern recognition 6.0 1.6 1.9 1.1
Quantitative analysis 4.3 1.0 2.6 0.6
 The competent middle manager: framing individual knowledge 343

Table 4 The competency model of administrative managers (continued)

Frequency % Best Competency

Competencies Total Best Average Aver. + Poor Type
Self-control 3.5 1.0 2.6 0.6
Written communication 3.5 1.3 0.0 –
Networking 2.6 0.5 1.7 0.4
Oral communication 2.6 0.3 0.8 0.4
Flexibility 2.6 0.8 2.6 0.4
Negotiating 1.7 1.6 0.0 –
System thinking 1.7 0.8 1.3 0.8
Group management 0.9 0.0 0.5 0
Theory building 0.9 0.0 2.6 0
Social objectivity 0.9 0.0 0.8 0

The best middle managers partially share with an average performer the most frequent
competency, but their excellent performance is mainly centred on the use of concepts.
It is the ability to use concepts and frameworks as part of the individual technical
expertise, accumulated by a long experience within the same firm, to interpret a critical
operational situation [24]. Their knowledge lets them to guarantee an excellent
performance from the accounting point of view, helps them to be efficiency oriented,
reducing costs and improving procedures, and provides the necessary leadership to
manage the human resource of their office.

Table 5 Threshold and distinctive competencies middle manager administrative sample

Threshold Distinctive
Efficiency orientation Persuasiveness Use of concepts
Initiative Self-confidence
Empathy Developing others

Analytical reasoning competencies are also diffused between project managers,

highlighting the critical role of information and knowledge management for product
development. Technical middle managers possess an articulated set of competencies
necessary to the main activity of this role that is problem solving. The most frequent
threshold competency is initiative, that is the ability to search for information about
products and components, autonomously and through unused channels. Average
performers have the necessary self-confidence to lead a team and the capacity to persuade
team members about project priorities and programmes.
Best managers have a richer portfolio of competencies (Tables 6 and 7), which covers
all the three clusters of the dictionary of Boyatzis (Action competencies, analytical
reasoning, and people management). Excellent performance in developing new products
depends on the planning capacity of best project leaders, who are able to anticipate future
problems of product innovation and to reduce the risks related to this type of exploration
processes [34].
344 A. Camuffo and A. Comacchio

Table 6 Technical middle managers’ competency model

Frequency % Best Competency

Competencies Total Best Average Aver. + poor Type
Initiative 39.7 16.3 17.5 1.1 Threshold
Efficiency orientation 30.2 12.3 10.6 1.1 –
Planning 19.8 7.5 4.5 1.7 Distinctive
Persuasiveness 16.4 4.7 4.2 1.5 Threshold
Use of concepts 15.5 5.7 5.0 1.2 –
Empathy 14.7 4.7 3.7 1.0 –
Pattern recognition 13.8 7.0 3.1 1.8 Distinctive
Self-confidence 12.9 6.6 10 0.9 Threshold
Developing others 9.5 3.8 1.2 3.2 Distinctive
Using technology 8.6 0.5 3.7 0.1 –
Attention to detail 6.9 4.7 2.5 1.98 Distinctive
Networking 4.3 1.3 0.8 0.8 –
Quantitative analysis 3.4 0.6 0.8 0.4 –
Oral communication 3.4 1.3 0 4.7
Group management 3.4 0.7 1.0 1.2
Written communication 2.6 0.4 0 – –
self-control 0.9 0.6 0 – –
System thinking 0.9 0 0 0 –
Theory building 0.9 1.9 0 – –
Social objectivity 0.9 0.6 0 – –
Flexibility 0 0 0 0 –
Negotiating 0 0 0 0 –

Table 7 Threshold competencies and distinctive competencies middle manager. Technician

sample

Threshold Distinctive
Initiative Planning
Self-confidence Pattern recognition
Persuasiveness Attention to details
Developing others

Moreover best performers have the capacity to assign the right project to the right
engineer, pursuing both the objectives of reducing time and costs of product development
processes and of developing young people, providing them the necessary experiences.
Very important for product innovation is the pattern recognition ability (a distinctive
competency), the capacity to understand a complex situation. Best performers can solve a
technical problem applying past experience even to new problems which are very
different from the past ones.
 The competent middle manager: framing individual knowledge 345

7 Discussion and managerial implication

7.1 Skill and competencies of best middle managers: the individual knowledge
endowment
The results analysed in previous sections shed more light on the intellectual capital of
Italian SMEs, not studied in depth so far. As regards skill profile findings about best
performers, the results show that firms can leverage on a good alignment among
organisational expectations and the individual perception of them, supporting
hypothesis 1. The role and competencies of people convergent with firms’ objectives are
a distinctive feature of these companies, where strategies and policies can be
implemented with relatively little communication and coordination costs, without
distortions and time delay. The ‘firm loyalty’ of talented middle managers has emerged in
each of the three groups studied (supervisors, administrative managers and project
managers) and can be considered a strategic slack resource for organisations.
The role of middle managers as an important repository of knowledge, is related to
their personal portfolio of competencies and to its variety and quality. Results from the
analysis of variety of competency, show that best performers have a richer portfolio of
competencies than others, supporting hypothesis 2.
Asking how best middle managers in SMEs are ‘competent’, means not only to
analyse how many times they are able to apply, share or diffuse technical or
organisational knowledge to solve difficult situations, but it also means to analyse the
quality of the competencies used, their coherence with the problems a manager have to
face day by day and, more strategically, will face in the future.
Generally middle managers play a critical role from the perspectives of people
management and motivation. Even if they do not take the final decisions on wages or
promotions, middle managers have a decisive word on these issues; moreover, they
manage the social context, are able to answer individual inquiries, and create a positive
climate with limited technical and organisational (time, people) resources. Their ability to
understand and manage the social dimension facilitates this role of interface between the
‘top’ and the ‘bottom’ and the alignment between firms and people’s objectives.
Best managers’ set of competencies is only partially related with this traditional role,
they demonstrated a range of different competencies. What mainly characterise talented
managers are analytical competencies: production supervisors possess system thinking
competency in addition to the use of concepts competency, possessed also by the
administrative best middle managers. Best performers of plants and offices share a
capacity to exploit their technological and organisational knowledge (based on quite a
long tenure) in different and new situations. These competencies seem aligned with
future requirements of enterprises, interested by the diffusion of ICT and globalisation,
where information processing and knowledge sharing are becoming a source of
competitive advantage. Project managers are also able to transfer, by the mentoring
process, their know-how to young employees with high potential. Moreover production
best supervisors possess a crucial competency of networking and product development
talented managers demonstrate some abilities of coordination, planning capacity to
anticipate future requirements of clients or problems of manufacturing the new products.
Summarising overall results from the analysis of frequency of competencies and the
competency models, confirm the hypothesis 3 and the idea that best managers in Italian
SMEs play a middle up-down role in the knowledge creation process. They can become
346 A. Camuffo and A. Comacchio

the link among the different internal actors (entrepreneur, management and front line
workers) and external network relationships, customers, supplier, banks and their
learning processes, important also for SMEs [35], activating the type of knowledge
management processes defined by Hansen, Nohria and Tierney as ‘personalisation
strategy’, that helps people to communicate knowledge, not to store it [36].

7.2 Implications for competence management

Managing competencies is a relevant challenge: it implies considerations regarding on
one hand the relationship between individual competencies and core organisational
capabilities and on the other human resource management issues. In this paper we tried to
shed some light on both types of problems. SMEs competitive advantage in the north-east
of Italy seems to rely on individual competencies. But environmental evolution, like
market and technological changes could undermine the core capacities of the firms.
As the recent debate on dynamic capabilities, concerning adaptation of existing
knowledge to competitive pressure, has pointed out [37–40] core capabilities can be at
the same time core rigidities; moreover firms should maintain the ‘requisite variety’ by
adapting, re-configuring existing competencies and exploring the emerging ones.
From this standpoint the research results suggest some preliminary considerations on
management of competencies:
• Action competencies vs analytical reasoning competencies. Both in the production
units and in the offices, people have high seniority and a deep know-how
accumulated mainly by learning by doing; on these bases they have a ‘hands-on’
attitude at all levels and at the same time have demonstrated the ability to hold
themselves accountable for results. These competencies allow people to maintain a
can-do attitude and to rarely give up (even if this means working over time) with the
risk of an excessive operative bias of middle managers. For this reason firms should
not overlook the analytical reasoning competencies, that are more diffused among
best performers.
• ‘Maturing’ competencies vs. emerging ones. Research findings show on one hand
consolidated and, threshold competencies, on the other, distinctive but less frequent
ones. The first ones can be defined as ‘core’ or ‘maturing’ competencies [33]. Core
competencies are still a key resource for a firm’s efficiency and flexibility, and they
have played a critical part in the organisational performance, but in the future they
could be increasingly less relevant. Some distinctive abilities still less frequent seems
to be ‘emerging competencies’, more coherent with a changing organisational
context. Firms should be able to balance the support to the core competencies and the
attention to the emerging ones, by the means of performance and potential
management policies.
• Tacit individual competencies vs. codified organisational knowledge. The analysis of
organisational context and individual competencies suggests that firms studied can
tap into a valued asset, made by best middle managers tacit knowledge about
products, processes and people. Even the knowledge transfer process depends mainly
on an individual ‘socialisation’ process [4]. However, individual knowledge can be
jeopardised by a turn-over of key people or professional obsolescence.
Consequently, particular attention should be paid to human resource management,
 The competent middle manager: framing individual knowledge 347

not only in order to foster the accumulation process of the individual knowledge, but
also to develop and support the organisational capitalisation of this know-how, for
example promoting the personalisation strategy of knowledge management,
informally driven by middle manager, as well as recognising and stimulating some
relevant mentoring activities.

8 Conclusion

The study focuses on middle managers, who represent typical key roles/people in SMEs
and show the personal characteristics that are causally related to outstanding
performances, thus providing insights on how to design human resource management and
development systems that can foster learning and the accumulation of intellectual capital
in SMEs.
The research data provided throughout the paper support the hypothesis we wish to
test.
This allows a reduction of communication costs, thus spurring organisational
efficiency. This finding reflects the peculiar nature of the ‘psychological contract’
between firms and workers in north-east Italy, nature that seems to be completely
different in other European contexts like UK [41]. The study also proved that the ‘best’
middle managers have comparatively more competencies, and that they have
differentiated competencies than average and poor performers.
Moreover, the data presented in the paper provides indirect evidence that, in SMEs,
firms’ performance relate more to the competence endowment of individuals, namely
middle managers, rather than on organisational structures and learning systems.Some
implications can be drawn from these findings for both scholars and practitioners. For
practitioners, competency modelling may provide an interesting framework for
developing solid and innovative human resource management systems, or to design
policies within a given labour market. For scholars, the research shows how to use
knowledge analysis at the individual level and then develop it at the organisational one.
For the HR management in SMEs the research suggests that recruiting policies of the
most talented (i.e. of those who possess a wider and richer range of competencies) should
be based on a process of competence assessment aiming at recognising emergent
competencies like analytical reasoning ones. Training and development programs,
vertical internal mobility (careers), appraisal and compensation systems should be
focused on competencies, too, and should foster knowledge creation processes from
individual to the organisational level and vice versa.
Further research should investigate the relationship between these two levels and the
underlying processes. In fact, even if in SMEs’ (the object of this analysis) such
relationship seems pretty easy and linear, more than in larger organisations, individual
and organisational knowledge, interact in complex and mediate ways, especially
because knowledge creating processes can be activated by the double net [42,43]: within
the internal network of organisational relationships and also with the outside network of
inter-organisational relationships [35].
348 A. Camuffo and A. Comacchio

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 The competent middle manager: framing individual knowledge 349

26 For instance best performers in manufacturing units have an age of 39, firm seniority is
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Vi = Σn dbin
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The frequency indicator used in data processing is the following:
Fi = ∑ n ECin ∑ n PCin
Fi: Frequency of competency i:
ECin: Emerged Competencies: number of behaviours that were observed and related to
competency i in the interview with manager n (independently of behavioural indicator)
PCin: Possible competencies: number of behaviours that were observable and related to
competency i in the interview with maanager n (independently of behavioural indicator).
Threshold and distinctive competencies has been defined and identified as following:
Threshold competency: the competency whose frequency among best performers is no more
than one time the sum of the frequency of a competency of average and poor performers.
Distinctive competency: the competency whose frequency among best performers is more than
one time and half the sum of the frequency of a competency of average and poor performers.
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350 A. Camuffo and A. Comacchio

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