The involvement of middle management in strategy development —Development and implementation of a foresight-based approach

Abstract

In times of increasingly uncertain and volatile markets, corporate foresight is becoming a relevant contributor to the long-term strategy of players, particularly multinational ones. A variety of foresight tools are in place to support top management's strategic decision-making. However, leaders cannot claim to have the full scope of knowledge and capabilities required for creating a long-term, robust and implementable strategy. Today, many experts with the relevant detailed knowledge about future developments and organisational capabilities can be found in middle management, which needs to be reflected in an integrative approach towards strategy development.In this paper, an approach is presented that describes how a foresight-based strategy development approach can be designed in order to leverage the potential of middle management. This approach is applied in strategy development to the supply chain management of a multinational manufacturing company. The case focuses on Asia, and includes 37 middle managers plus their staff – totalling approximately 70 employees – from 13 countries. The results indicate that top and middle management were willing to follow the highly structured process, contributing to strategy development in terms of ideas, data, time, resources and analytical work. The developed strategy integrated the middle management's perspective successfully and strategy implementation started immediately.