Forgotten interactions: Invoking top managers in middle managerial strategizing

This paper adopts a practice-based discursive approach to examine the direct and indirect influence of the TMT on middle managerial strategizing. Adopting a longitudinal, inductive and ethnographic case study, this paper explores how TMT members are invoked in middle managerial strategizing; how different TMT constellations are discursively constructed; and how these constructions influence strategizing dynamics. Through a micro-level analysis of 12 months of middle managerial strategy meetings (N=26) at an elite Scandinavian organization, we identify that TMT constellations are constructed in a fluid, flexible and moment-by-moment way, shifting over time, as middle managers invoke TMT members in a one-off or serial, enrolling fashion. These invocations shape strategizing by influencing how projects are discussed, planned, and enacted, within and across meetings.