Linking employee agility with line managers’ practical wisdom

Line managers play an important role in employee outcomes, including the actions that influence employee agility. In light of increasingly dynamic and unpredictable business environment, such managerial efforts are assumed to call for not just well-thought-out but also wise decisions. Despite the importance of the influence that managers exert on their employees, there have been no studies on the practical wisdom of managers and its impact on employee behaviour. The ability of managers to influence decision making in organisations has also long been the subject of study, with much less attention paid to the discretion that managers outside the top management team, such as line managers, exercise in influencing organisational outcomes. The aim of this article is to address these gaps by focusing on the relationship between line managers’ practical wisdom and employee agility and the impact of line managers’ perceived managerial discretion on this relationship. By applying agency theory and stewardship theory, a theoretical grounding for the relationship between line managers’ practical wisdom and employee agility is established. With reference to managerial discretion theory, the importance of a line manager’s perceived discretion is addressed, which can either constrain or enable the manager’s actions. The paper concludes with implications for future research and practice.