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Author Floyd and Wooldridge
(1992)
Guth and MacMillan (1986)
Heracleous (2000) Ikävalko (2005) Ikävalko and Aaltonen (2001)
Judge and Stahl (1995) Mantere (2007)
Subject Dynosaurs or Dynamos?
Recognizing middle managers strategic role.
Strategy
implementation versus middle managers self- interest.
Strategy implementation Practices and logics of action of middle managers in strategy
implementation.
Middle manager’s problems in strategy implementation.
Personal characteristics of middle managers influence their perceptions and therefore, their understanding of the strategy.
Role expectations and middle managers strategic agency.
Awareness of the strategy
An implementation gap between strategies conceived by top management and unawareness at lower levels of the organization could cause problems.
Middle managers have the ability to close this gap.
Middle managers that feel that outcomes are unlikely to occur could deliberately create barriers to implementation.
It is assumed that everybody already knows and understands the strategy. Due to a lack of communication by the middle managers or manager the strategic information flow may be discontinued at some level.
Personal characteristics of middle managers influence their perceptions and therefore, their understanding of the strategy.
Contextualization of the strategic top-down objectives is important for the middle manager in order to provide a
‘backbone’ for everyday work.
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Commitment to the strategy
Shared awareness and understanding, subsequently lead to
higher levels of commitment. Disloyalty of middle managers to the
strategy contributes to foot dragging
Strategic goal conflict with middle manager’s
personal and sub-unit goals dismotivates middle managers. Non-
motivated middle managers can slow down or sabotage the implementation process.
Both middle managers and managers perceived that the lower the actor in the organizations the less one commits itself to the strategy. Middle managers
see this as a problem.
Perception of feasibility of the
strategy
Top management that explains the strategic roles
down the line to the middle manager encourages strategic appropriate behaviour, so
that middle managers explain strategic behaviour down the line
as well.
Middle managers do not think the strategy is the right one and therefore
sabotage strategy implementation.
Middle managers are relevant strategic actors to tell a story of coherence in
strategy.
Due to competing activities, unaligned organizational systems and
resources and negligence of daily business middle managers might perceive the strategy as unfeasible so that it is difficult to
contribute.
Personal characteristics of middle managers are found to have an influence on the perceived probability of success and the perceived
consistency between the strategic and their personal
goals.
When top management has no respect of every-day
problem solving, the middle manager does not
perceive its work as valuable. Respect is important here: the strategist needs the implementer so he should
respect him.
