Working at the boundaries: Middle managerial work as a source of emancipation and alienation
通过对一家巴西会计公司的民族志研究，探讨中层管理者在组织群体间协调多重角色的边界工作体验，发现其同时经历解放（如自主性、赋权）与异化（如疲劳、疏离）的矛盾张力。
The current article examines the experience of middle management through the concept of boundary work, characterized as the work of negotiating between multiple roles in the interstices of organizational groups. Through an ethnographic study of a Brazilian accounting firm, we explore the ambivalent experience of boundary work as characteristic of professional middle managerial workers. Our managers described themselves as proactive and reflexive agents, on the one hand, yet also as lacking autonomy and a sense of belonging, on the other. We examine this tension as a contrast between forces of emancipation (i.e. sense of mastery, autonomy, empowerment and reflexivity) and alienation (i.e. fatigue, lack of self-determination, and detachment from their profession and coworkers). We discuss these forces and their implications for managerial work in the light that, in our findings, managers routinely shift between being agential and reflexive mediators (boundary subjects) and interfacing and coordination devices (boundary objects).