Lately many large and small organisations became more interested in strategic planning and its probable benefits (Parker, 1990). Strategic planning keeps on having a very important role in an increasingly complicated and vague environment since it affects the organisation’s performance positively (Raman, 2009). However, separating planners from doers is one of the downsides in strategic planning (Parker, 1990). For example, the risk of developing to some extent an impracticable and inappropriate set of plans by a small group of professional to address the desires and guidelines of the organisation increases (Parker, 1990).
Therefore, it is said to be that involving middle level managers in strategic planning is advantageous for organisations since they give important “soft information” about important stakeholders, quality of strategic decisions gets better and they develop a sense of ownership and recognition with organisational objectives (Raman, 2009). Moreover, in 1970 Bower concluded that judging wether strategic matters are being well thought out could only be done by middle level managers since they are in the position that allows them to judge (Floyd and Wooldridge, 1990).
However, usually, middle managers have not been regarded as an element of strategy development aside from providing informational inputs and directing implementation (Floyd and Wooldridge, 1992). The role of a middle manager can be defined as “one who links the activity of vertically related groups and is responsible for at least sub-functional workflow but not the work flow of the organisation as a whole” (Thakur, 1998 p. 733).
This essay will discuss why HR managers should involve middle managers in the strategy plan in order to be strategic and how they can involve them.
Involving middle managers in strategy developing process is very important since middle managers have the power to give or hide information about important concerns, frame an issue in a specific way, mobilize...