The role of middle and top managers in the strategy process

Abstract

Since Bower’s (1970) early pioneering work in strategy process, there havebeen several decades of empirical, often survey-based or in-depth casebased, studies that examine middle managers’ involvement in strategy (e.g., Burgelman, 1983a, 1983b; Mintzberg and McHugh, 1985; Guth and MacMillan, 1986; Schilit, 1987; Westley, 1990; Wooldridge and Floyd, 1990). Though much has been accomplished with regards to the understanding of the underlying process (e.g., Floyd and Wooldridge, 2001; Wooldridge et al., 2008), we believe there is still a need for some basic clarifications on the definitions of middle (and top) managers and the strategy process itself, a task that Wooldridge et al. (2008) previously called for. We believe the definitions we provide can open new avenues for future research with new managerial implications. Further, in this chapter, we contend that extant research which has adopted the Bower‒Burgelman (B-B) perspective tends to overemphasize the role of middle managers while it underestimates the influence that top managers can directly exert in the strategy process (Bower, 1970; Burgelman, 1984, 1991, 2002), a depiction that we believe is not always accurate from a descriptive perspective or adequate from a normative point of view (see Mirabeau and Maguire, 2013 for a recent exception). The remainder of the chapter proceeds as follows. We first define the following key terms: “middle managers,” “top managers,” and the “strategy process.” Then, we describe what we believe is the current dominant view on the role of middle and top managers in the strategy process, which we think from a descriptive perspective has taken on a normative tone. Next, we proceed to discuss the limitations of this currently dominant perspective, and argue for the need of a more balanced and contingent view on the role of middle and top managers in the strategy process. We conclude with a summary of our contributions.