Understanding operations strategizing in project-based organisations: middle managers’ interaction and strategy praxis

• The study of operations strategy (OS) in production organisations has largely focused on the content of highlevelstrategies, and less on their practical enactment. Little attention has been paid to the middle managerswho mediate the space between the strategic intent of production organisations and their operational realities.The role and strategic agency of such managers has been shown to be influential in shaping, impeding andenabling OS, but they remain surprisingly absent from much project organisation literature. In this paper, weexamine the role of middle managers in OS practice via a Strategy-as-Practice framework. We study twoproject-based organisations, one in Denmark and one in UK, developing lean production processes. In theDanish case, the change strategy was initiated bottom-up from the project actors, whereas in the UK, thechange strategy was imposed top-down as a strategic management initiative. In both cases, middle managersplayed a crucial role in mediating and translating intention. We show how strategy praxis, and the leadershipof operations, is highly distributed within project-based organisations regardless of where change is initiatedfrom. The findings have resonances for theory on the agency of middle managers, and for the understandingof micro activities of OS formulation and implementation within project-based forms of organisation.

Ämnesord

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Samhällsbyggnadsteknik -- Byggproduktion (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Civil Engineering -- Construction Management (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

middle managers

Construction contractors

operations strategy

strategizing

Publikations- och innehållstyp

art (ämneskategori)

ref (ämneskategori)