Increasingly, organizations open up their strategy processes to include employees that have previously been excluded from strategy making. Crowds, communities but also frontline employees are invited to participate in strategy making to gain new insights and to increase commitment to the developed strategy. But what does participation by these ‘new strategists’ mean for traditional strategists, particularly middle managers?

We asked this question in a recent study published in Journal of Management Studies based on a case study of an international financial company undertaking an Open Strategy process. In this firm, the CEO invited employees to participate in the strategy-making process and asked the middle managers to support the employees’ participation. Rather than assigning the middle managers a particular strategic role in the participatory process, they were asked to facilitate employees’ strategic activities.

Our study shows that wider inclusion of front-line employees undermines the traditional strategic role of middle managers. This is because the included employees are meant to take over the strategic activities that are usually performed by middle managers, such as translating strategic ideas from the top to the bottom of the organizations. Thus, increased inclusion can make middle managers’ traditional role obsolete. So how do middle managers react to this threat?

We saw that the middle managers were frustrated. But soon they found ways to reclaim their strategic role. At first, they continued with their traditional activities despite the intention of the open strategy process to hand these activities over to the employees. As middle managers continued with their activities that were meant to be performed by the employees, they constrained employee participation. When top managers tried to ensure employee participation by prohibiting the middle managers’ activities, the middle managers tried to reclaim their role by performing their strategic activities clandestinely or by encroaching on the strategic activities of other employees, such as communications managers. In this way the middle managers further constrained employee participation.

So, what do we learn from this study? The following three key take-aways are of particular interest to those who want to learn more about the pitfalls of widening participation in the strategy process.

Three take-aways on widening participation in strategy making

Take away 1: Mind the trade-off in the participation of new and traditional strategists

Our study reveals that participation of traditional strategists, in our case middle managers, and new strategists, such as frontline employees entails an ongoing trade-off. This trade-off exists because by widening participation to new employee groups, top managers might inadvertently restrict the activities of traditional strategists, which in turn sets off different employee groups encroaching on and constraining each other’s participation in the strategy process. In this sense, the participation of one group of employees tends to undermine the participation of another. In other words, opening up the strategy process to new strategists is not possible without closing it down somewhat for traditional strategists and vice versa. Thus, our first key take-away is that even when the intention is to increase participation in strategy making, it remains challenging to enable participation by new and traditional strategists simultaneously.

Take away 2: Be aware of the power of traditional strategists

As traditional strategists are more experienced in strategy making, they are more powerful than new participants in claiming their role as strategists. When their roles are constrained, traditional strategists are also more powerful in undermining the participation of new strategy actors because they use their experience to find new ways of reclaiming their strategic role. In particular, our study shows that while the middle managers in our case initially defended their traditional activities, they then adapted their traditional activities to clandestine forms and, when this was no longer possible, they took over strategic activities from other managers, encroaching on their domains. However, for new strategy participants this is not possible because they lack experience in strategy making and thus the ability to adapt their activities or take over activities from others. Thus, our second key take away is that managers who have an advantage because they are more experienced in strategy making might intentionally or unintentionally reduce the chances that new strategy participants can participate in the strategy process.

Take away 3: Expand strategic activities to avoid the trade-off and power imbalance in participation

Our third key take away relates to the need to expand the range of strategic activities in order to avoid the mentioned trade-off in participation and to counter the power imbalance between new and traditional strategists. Our study shows that, as all participating employees cannot perform the same strategic activities at the same time, different groups will undermine each other’s opportunities for participation. Thereby traditional strategists are more powerful in undermining the participation of new strategy actors. When widening participation, our study suggests that organizations need to consider the existing (hierarchical) organizational structures, and in particular the strategic activities of organizational members. If additional employees are included in the strategy process, the set of activities in which employees can participate needs to be extended in order to prevent traditional strategy actors, who might be used to performing particular strategic activities, from undermining the participation of new strategists. When strategic activities are expanded and clearly allocated, the trade-off between new and traditional strategists’ participation subsides.

Got interested in reading the full article? Visit the Wiley-JMS website https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14676486

Author biographies: