Premium
Role Expectations and Middle Manager Strategic Agency
Author(s) -
Mantere Saku
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
journal of management studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.398
H-Index - 184
eISSN - 1467-6486
pISSN - 0022-2380
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-6486.2007.00744.x
Subject(s) - agency (philosophy) , legitimacy , middle management , rationality , reciprocal , set (abstract data type) , business , strategic thinking , work (physics) , strategic planning , public relations , political science , marketing , sociology , politics , computer science , social science , mechanical engineering , linguistics , philosophy , law , programming language , engineering
Based on an analysis of 262 interviews, I argue that role expectations have the potential to both enable and constrain middle manager strategic agency. To explain why the same role expectations have contradictory effects on agency, I analyse enabling conditions corresponding to four strategic role expectations, based on Floyd and Wooldridge's work on middle manager roles. After presenting eight enabling conditions for strategic agency, specific to the four role expectations, I argue that the dominant functionalist view of strategic roles should be augmented from a middle manager viewpoint. I suggest a reciprocal view of strategic role expectations, which elucidates the tensions between dialogue, legitimacy and rationality within a set of strategic roles.