Middle managers' agency in shaping socially disruptive technologies: Insights into the (re)configuration of human–robot work in Industry 5.0

This paper investigates how middle managers exercise agency in shaping socially disruptive technologies (SDTs), i.e. technologies capable of transforming established work relations, organisational practices, and normative expectations surrounding work. Within manufacturing, collaborative systems are increasingly introduced as flexible automation solutions that reorganize human–robot work configurations. While existing research has mainly focused on task-level transformations following their deployment, limited attention has been paid to the managerial practices that shape how techno–social disruptiveness unfolds within organisations. Drawing on an interpretive qualitative study based on narrative interviews with 26 middle managers across European manufacturing organisations, this study adopts the combined lenses of the social shaping of technology (SST) and configurational boundary work (CBW) to explore how middle managers act as ‘mediators of disruptiveness’ navigating uncertainty and ethical tensions across four interrelated forms of agency: ‘scouting the potential relevance for collaborative applications’, ‘mobilising alignment within and beyond the organisation’, ‘steering the initial configuration of human–robot work systems’, and ‘unlocking workers’ embodied knowledge’. Our results extend the CBW literature by highlighting middle managers' agency as a process embedded in multiple temporalities and shaped through the interplay of reflexive and non-reflexive components. The study further problematises the notion of positive compromise in the SST literature and offers an exemplary case account at the organisational level of how SDTs are negotiated and shaped in practice within emerging Industry 5.0 contexts. This perspective gives renewed voice to the role of middle managers, long regarded as ‘morally muted’.