The critical role of Middle Managers in ESG implementation, a scoping review.

Executives from major companies expanded their organizations’ purpose to include societal
interests, incorporating Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) themes into their strategic
plans. However, its implementation necessitates changes the way organizations run their business
and beget tensions that require effective management, communication and strategies to address
(Hahn et al., 2015). Middle managers are essential in executing strategies and organizational
transformations (Hermkens & L. Romme, 2020) as they act as conduits between upper management
and frontline employees, (Harding et al., 2014; Keys & Bell, 1982). Their interpretations, enactments
and translations of sustainability policies influence the organization's overall sustainability
performance (Balogun, 2003; Isabella, 1990). The extant literature on ESG implementations
addresses resolution strategies for managing tensions (Hahn et al., 2015; Van der Byl & Slawinski,
2015) but is not clear about the role of middle managers as agents in this context. This study focuses
on the ways middle managers internalize corporate ESG values, strategies they employ to implement
ESG, how they translate strategic goals into operational practices, and leadership they show
implementing ESG. The concept of sustainable business development lacks clear definition which
results in interpretations that dilute its effectiveness as a guide (Christen & Schmidt, 2012). This
highlights the importance of studying how middle managers manage ESG implementations,
considering their role as change agents. We designed a scoping review to offer an overview of key
concepts, map evidence, and find gaps in this research area (Arksey & O’Malley, 2005), instead of
providing a critical and synthesized response to a specific question. To maintain methodological
rigor, we utilized the framework from Arksey & O’Malley (2005). Organization studies became
differentiated and are a complex field of research with various schools of thought (Scherer &
Steinmann, 1999) whereby organizational changes ontologically are viewed through a process- or
entity-based lens (Langley et al., 2013). Further exploration of process-based theories could enhance
our understanding of organizational change and the role of middle managers (Wenzel & Koch,
2018). This study maps ESG implementation research, focusing on middle managers. Search strings
based on preliminary review of the literature found 10635 articles published on the Web of Science
(WoS) database. Refining the search resulted in 71 articles included in this review. Preliminary
findings suggest that the involvement of middle managers in ESG implementation has become
increasingly noteworthy, with a considerable number of articles on this topic published since 2020.
While the literature to date mostly assumes an entity-based view, identifying activities middle
managers should do for ESG strategy implementation, a handful of articles adopt a process-based
view to explore how middle managers assume these activities (e.g., translation of ESG policies) and
why these activities are important to the overall success of ESG strategy implementation (e.g., shared
organizational sense making). Based on the findings of this scoping review we developed a
framework to clarify how middle managers’ triggers, leadership, and processes could facilitate ESG
strategy implementation. This research provides practical insights for organizations implementing
ESG strategies and theoretical insights on middle managers' roles in organizational change and ESG
strategy execution.