From Practitioner Insight to Theoretical Model: Bi-Directional Leader Influence in Middle Management Hierarchies

Hierarchical organizations are susceptible to cascading dysfunction when counterproductive senior leader behaviors—e.g., passive insubordination, pursuit of personal agendas, and disparaging comments about senior executives—erode trust, alignment, and performance at subordinate levels. Middle managers and supervisors, positioned as linking pins, face persistent dual-role tension: enacting effective leadership downward while performing constructive followership upward. This paper proposes a multi-level, chained nomological network integrating FRO/LRO, ILT/IFT, bidirectional influence (LI downward and FI upward/managing up), and LMX across successive hierarchical dyads. The model incorporates recursive upward continuation and dual-facing constructs (downward leader-oriented vs. upward follower-oriented), with supervisors and managers mediating cross-level effects. Originating from practitioner observations in a government organization, the framework was refined through an IO-scientific lens to formalize how congruence or misalignment propagates and how upward FI can interrupt adverse trickle-down effects. The model generates testable propositions and offers practical implications for mitigating role conflict and cascading dysfunction, particularly in public-sector contexts. It extends relational leadership and followership scholarship by emphasizing chained dyads and bidirectional influence, bridging practitioner insight with scientific rigor to advance understanding of leadership-followership interdependence in complex hierarchical systems.