When things go wrong at work, it’s often the middle managers who are scapegoated. They tend to bear the brunt of the criticism, both from the team they manage and their higher ups. And they’re often characterized as bureaucratic or ineffective.

But Brooke Vuckovic, a clinical professor of management and organizations at Kellogg, finds a much different picture of middle managers emerges in her discussions with MBA students and aspiring leaders—one that more closely resembles a cadre of unsung heroes.

That’s this week. Plus, we’ll explore what happens when the competition to complete projects gets fierce.

Moral compass

Vuckovic conducted a survey between 2023–2024 of 198 MBA students and alumni who took her course on moral complexity. She found that these young leaders were eager to provide examples of their own bosses (current and former middle managers) who made a meaningful difference in the lives of their teams through small moments of support and kindness.

“But more than that, they recounted their managers’ commitment to their teams as a whole and a willingness to push back creatively or redefine problems even when facing heightened pressure from their organizations or clients,” writes Vuckovic. “When we imagine these small moments, amplified across thousands of middle managers, we can see their great potential for reinforcing the moral fabric of our society.”

The survey also revealed which attributes of managers resonated with young leaders the most. The single most-cited attribute was a strong commitment to their direct reports, as demonstrated through acts of care, kept promises, and attentive listening.

“These relatively simple behaviors yielded a big impact on their team members’ lives, well beyond a single incident,” Vuckovic writes. “I would have followed her over a cliff,” one survey respondent noted about their middle manager, “because work was more than just results to her, and she was kind, honest, and empathetic.”

Read more from Vuckovic in Harvard Business Review.

Healthy competition?

The race to be first can be great for innovation, spurring new products and ideas. It can also do wonders for people’s careers.

“Academic careers are built on reputation,” says Ryan Hill, a Kellogg assistant professor of strategy who studies the incentives that drive innovation.

In a series of studies, Hill and colleagues investigated this topic within the field of structural biology, where researchers compete to discover the three-dimensional shapes of individual proteins.

They wrote an economic model to describe how this competition would affect the amount of time scientists spend on a protein-structure problem before uploading their findings to a database for eventual publication.

They found that scientists who were second to complete their projects were nearly 20 percent less likely to have their work published in a top journal, and their papers received 21 percent fewer citations from future work. Furthermore, they found that the more competitive a particular race was, the more the scientists rushed their work—resulting in lower-quality findings.

“As economists, we like competition because it can encourage effort and timely disclosure of discoveries,” Hill says. “But it might also create unintended consequences that could have negative effects on science.”

Read more in Kellogg Insight.