Middle managers and strategy: Microdynamics of inclusion
研究官僚组织中中层管理者在战略过程中的角色，发现他们常感到被排斥，这种排斥导致低效和高成本，但通过微观社会学理论分析上下级间的战略对话，可以缓解排斥并影响其积极性。
Abstract This paper examines the role of middle management in strategic processes in bureaucratic organizations. There is evidence of extensive dissatisfaction among middle managers, who often perceive that they are excluded from strategic processes. This exclusion is de‐energizing, inefficient, and in the end, expensive. Although an element of exclusion is probably inevitable, the extent to which it occurs varies across organizations. This suggests that both exclusion and its consequences can be alleviated. An application of microsociological theory to this problem focuses attention on discrete communications about strategic generalities between superior and subordinate. This paper argues that middle managers may either be excluded or included in such ‘strategic conversations’, but inclusion does not guarantee satisfaction. When included they may emerge energized or de‐energized around strategic issues, depending on several important factors. Finally, the paper discusses the implications of these dynamics for more macro level processes, in particular, strategy as allocation of resources and strategy as interpretative schema. A set of propositions as to the likelihood of increasing or decreasing feelings of inclusion and motivation, and of sustaining such feelings over time, concludes this discussion.