Middle management roles in strategy implementation

Abstract: The successful implementation of business strategy has become a key focus of many leading organisations in the modern business world. However, according to Jha (2011), many organisations experience little success in strategic implementation. This is because the middle management employees in the organisation are not able to translate their strategic plans into operational actions (Jha, 2011, Dlodlo, 2011). The purpose of this study was to establish what role middle management leader’s play in strategy implementation. A qualitative study was conducted at XYZ Limited, a large retail organisation in South Africa. The data was gathered for the study through the methods of a case study, in-depth interviews, focus group discussion and from solicited data from the organisation. The researcher has applied the principles of content analysis to analyse the data and describe the themes that emerged from the in-depth interviews, focus group discussion and solicited data. The researcher also used descriptive statistics in the study to highlight summaries of the key observations made and the data collected. The findings revealed that whilst all of the middle management leaders understood why it is important for organisations to have sound business strategies, they did not clearly understand what the business strategy of XYZ Limited was. One of the reasons for their lack of understanding of the XYZ Limited business strategy was that they were not involved in the design of the business strategy at any stage. This hindered their ability to implement the business strategy in the organisation. Middle management leaders did not acknowledge that they participated in the strategic planning process. There is often not alignment between the strategic goals and the operational goals which hinders the strategic implementation process. This results in the middle management level in the organisation to feel overwhelmed on a daily basis as they are in a constant crisis management mode (Viljoen, 2015). It therefore becomes important to explore the roles of middle management in strategy implementation. It is recommended that middle management leaders are trained on how to manage change in order to get the buy-in of their employees during the strategy implementation...M.Phil