Constructing Interlocking Rationales in Top‐driven Strategic Renewal
| Published date | 01 December 2013 |
| Date | 01 December 2013 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2012.00821.x |
Constructing Interlocking Rationales
in Top-driven Strategic Renewal
J. Ignacio Canales
University of Glasgow, Business School, Gilbert Scott Building, West Quadrangle,
Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland, UK
Email: ignacio.canales@glasgow.ac.uk
Under top-driven change, active involvement of middle managers in strategy-making
requires top and middle to find common ground. The paper offers inductive theoretical
development of top managers’ role as enablers for the strategic contribution of the middle
levels. Central to this role is the symbolic reorganization where the middle managers’
position is set. Next, middle managers’ operational efficiency allows their performance
to be shown and increases their reputation. In consequence, the middle level can actively
shape the role suggested by top management, which increases their power base. Finally,
when these previous interactions escalate into a two-way process where the middle and
top management contribute to each other’s efforts, interlocking rationales are achieved.
Our managers only made strategy their own when
they stopped chiselling stones and started building
cathedrals. (CEO of the case studied)
This quote reflects an important problem for
organizations where managers lose on opportuni-
ties when they have a too narrow focus. Middle-
management research has placed the emphasis on
the contributions of the middle line to strategy-
making (Balogun, 2003; Floyd and Wooldridge,
2000; Wooldridge, Schmid and Floyd, 2008).
However, it is left implied that the role of top
management is somewhat exogenous to middle-
management involvement. This paper puts this
assumption into question.
The relationship of top to middle management,
when facing top-driven change, may vary from
confronting and negotiating anticipated resistance
to bluntly pushing through it (Stensaker and
Langley, 2010). The present paper addresses the
former by studying the role of top management
as enablers for the strategic contribution of
middle levels under top-driven change. Essential
to studying middle-management involvement are
the attention-based view (ABV) (Ocasio, 1997)
coupled with the symbolic dimension of organiz-
ing (March, 2010; Smircich and Stubbart, 1985;
Weick, 1995) and symbolic power (Bourdieu,
1991; Pfeffer, 1994). This paper uses the political
dimension of the process, which is crucial in
explaining both the strategy formulation process
and the outcome of this process (Mintzberg, 1983,
1994a; Pettigrew and McNulty, 1995; Pettigrew,
1986; Shrivastava and Grant, 1985). This
approach has been underused in previous research
on strategy process (Carter, Clegg and Korn-
berger, 2008). This paper contributes to this debate
by offering a novel conceptualization of the
interactions between top and middle manage-
ment, which integrates the ABV with the political
dimension of the strategy process and symbolic
organizing.
The central argument in this paper is that
the process of enabling middle managers is based
on genuine, upfront communication from the
top, promoting independent middle managers,
as well as on the middle managers becoming
The author thanks Monika Kostera and the anonymous
reviewers for their hard work throughout the revision
process. He is grateful to Julia Balogun, Robert Chia,
Denis Fischbacher-Smith, Marian Jones, Robert Macin-
tosh, John Manzie, Lee Parker, Joaquim Vilà and Bill
Wooldridge for their insightful comments on previous
versions of this manuscript.
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British Journal of Management, Vol. 24, 498–514 (2013)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2012.00821.x
© 2012 The Author(s)
British Journal of Management © 2012 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
responsible for the outcomes of strategies that
they have proposed. This is important, because
strategy-making is better understood as a social
process of continuous change where organiza-
tional members take part to different degrees
(Balogun, 2003; Currie, 1999; Floyd and
Wooldridge, 2000). To understand strategy
making as a social process (Whittington, 2007),
we need to fully understand the interactions that
shape the process and the mechanisms through
which strategy becomes crystallized through these
interactions into an activity system (Spender,
1995). Hence, the question that has guided this
research is how, through interactions, top man-
agement enables or hinders strategic involvement
in managers across the organization.
Theoretical background
Middle-management research has encouraged the
redirecting of the focus to the contributions of
the middle line to strategy-making (Wooldridge,
Schmid and Floyd, 2008). However, it has not
considered the role of top management in encour-
aging middle-management influence. This paper
addresses the issue of how involvement of manag-
ers across the organization is promoted by redi-
recting their attention structures.
Bottom-up strategy-making theories put the
emphasis on middle-management involvement,
but overlook the role top managers play to enable
or trigger such bottom-up processes (Balogun,
2003; Brauer, 2009; Currie, 1999; Floyd and
Wooldridge, 2000). Notably, empowerment rests
on the assumption that encouragement given to
middle managers results in higher involvement in
company matters (Spreitzer, 1995). However, this
link may still suffer from numerous fractures,
such as middle-management scepticism about
top-management commitment (Labianca, Gray
and Brass, 2000) or mutual self-interest (Mantere,
2008) and general resistance to change (Mantere
and Vaara, 2008). This paper addresses how the
role of top management as enablers of middle-
managers’ strategizing can link their involvement
with encouragement. This is important, as
empowerment remains a desirable organizational
feature (Zhang and Bartol, 2010) because it makes
strategy-making much more than a centralized,
top-down phenomenon (Balogun, 2003; Balogun
and Johnson, 2004; Wooldridge, Schmid and
Floyd, 2008). Linking encouragement and
involvement is central to understanding organiz-
ing and strategizing, especially when research has
shown that the processes of organizing and strate-
gizing are better viewed as ongoing enactment
processes, continuously realized through the
performance of specific organizational activities
rather than as one-off spectacular away-day
events carried out by top management (March,
2010; Smircich and Stubbart, 1985; Wooldridge,
Schmid and Floyd, 2008).
Effective use of power and influence is perhaps
the most important driver of action (Pfeffer,
1994). In consequence, if strategy is made with the
aim of being implemented, it is necessarily an
exercise of mobilizing political support (Mintz-
berg, 1983). Exercises such as strategy planning
do not really produce strategy, but they can
encourage coordination and action (Mintzberg,
1994b). Such coordination tends to occur under a
participative learning system which allows adap-
tive planning (Shrivastava and Grant, 1985). As
with any common endeavour, strategy-making
relies on interdependencies, and such interde-
pendencies generate outcomes that are different
from the requests of a single agent. ‘Interdepend-
ence exists whenever one actor does not necessar-
ily control all of the conditions necessary for
the achievement of an action or for obtaining
the desired outcome from the action’ (Pfeffer
and Salanzik, 1978, p. 40). Where several causal
agents, such as different management levels, are
involved, power and influence will operate
through interdependencies to produce outcomes
(Pfeffer, 1994). One way to structure interdepend-
encies and, in consequence power relations, is
through categories that divide and configure
power, such as middle and top management.
However, it is not because of ‘structural position
that an individual or group possesses certain
power resources’ (Pettigrew, 1977, p. 84).
Although responsibility and authority are vested
in positions (Pfeffer, 1992, p. 76), position, repu-
tation and performance are interrelated, and if
any of the three is favourable, the others will be
positively affected (Pfeffer, 1994, p. 142). It is the
skill of mobilizing all power sources that converts
potential power into actual influence (Pettigrew
and McNulty, 1995).
Unless interactions bridge activities and
knowledge, middle managers will remains an
underused resource (Balogun, 2003; Jarzab-
Constructing Interlocking Rationales 499
© 2012 The Author(s)
British Journal of Management © 2012 British Academy of Management.
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