Middle manager as the interface between global strategy and strategy practice

How practice is/gets aligned with strategy is a topic of great interest for the SP literature. This paper is about the middle manager's role in enacting strategy through his practices and production of textual tools that provide a frame and sensegiving resulting in a local adjustment of the global strategy, contributing to a successful implementation. The important role of the middle manager as the interface between global strategy and strategy practice, particularly through his production of textual tools that creates alignment, is highlighted in an empirical study of a new strategy implementation in an organization. More specifically, this paper focus on the critical role a middle manager played in determining how a global strategy was enacted (strategy practice) and how the textual tools (materializing) managers produce shaped this strategy enactment by embodying his sensegiving and conveying it successfully to frontline staff. We used Latour works (1999; 1997) to inquire the materialization of strategy in textual tools (i.e.: how tools through materializing processes frame the multiple activities) and studied three different categories that we identified: operating texts, geography design and time/timing texts. Our findings are important in suggesting that enacted strategy is not only supported by traditional strategic tool, nor by oral activity, but mainly and structurally by the materiality that is produced by middle managers to give sense to the strategy to employees. Second we add value to empirical work on strategizing because of the diversity of our data: our sample included top managers, managers and employees, and various texts were documented. They gave us the capacity to analyze the important role of the middle manager as the interface between global strategy and strategy practice.