Working at the boundaries: Middle managerial work as a source of emancipation and alienation

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...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Human relations (New York) Vol. 72; no. 3; pp. 534 - 564
Main Authors: Azambuja, Ricardo, Islam, Gazi
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.03.2019
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects:
Accounting firms
Alienation
Ambivalence
Autonomy
Belonging
Business administration
Coordination
Disengagement
Emancipation
Empowerment
Ethnography
Fatigue
Human relations
Humanities and Social Sciences
Job characteristics
Managers
Middle management
Multiple roles
Reflexivity
Roles
Self determination
Work
Brazil
boundary objects
Brazil
experience of work
boundary subjects
ethnography
politics of everyday life
ISSN:0018-7267, 1741-282X
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary: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).
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ISSN:0018-7267
1741-282X
DOI:10.1177/0018726718785669