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

Abstract

The current paper examines the experience of middle management through the concept of boundary work, characterized as the work of negotiating between multiple roles at 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 selfdetermination, 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 mediatorsboundary subjectsand interfacing and coordination devicesboundary objects.

Unravelling the antecedents of loneliness in the workplace

“…Building on ideas presented in Azambuja and Islam (2019) on the vacillation between emancipation and alienation in middle management roles, our article specifically explores some of the individual, relational, and organisational conditions that can create loneliness as a result of relational alienation from desired and fulfilling social relationships. Despite dealing with a multitude of people and groups every day, participants in Azambuja and Islam’s (2019: 554) study felt ‘exploited by their co-workers, experienced loneliness, and suffered from relations of rivalry with their peers’.…”

“…First, the social and emotional provisions the individual may receive from a family member or a close relationship outside the organisation may mitigate feelings of loneliness at work. Because individuals in organisations may need to conceal their thoughts and feelings about their work experiences (Azambuja and Islam, 2019), further disconnecting them from personal relationships at work, support from outside work may increase in its importance. As shown in Figure 1, relational deficiencies at work may not necessarily be felt as distressing if the individual has at least one confidante, or a supportive family network to which he or she can turn.…”

Corrigendum

“…Even in firms engaging in more mundane business, however, routine managerial practices now appear less and less concerned with values shared in the social sphere (Courpasson, 2019). Competition among individuals within organizations seems more and more to be leading to disloyal relationships among individuals, with workers obsessively seeking to show that they are 'simply the best, better than all the rest', even if the price they pay for it is loneliness and isolation (Azambuja & Islam, 2019). As episodes such as the Volkswagen emissions scandal have shown, competition among businesses is pushing employees to falsify information for their own survival (Rhodes, 2016).…”

Occupational boundary play: Crafting a sense of identity legitimacy in an emerging occupation

“…From a macro perspective, then, our model proposes an intraoccupational lens on the topic of occupational emergence, focusing on how individuals perceive and make sense of their own work domains and how their methods for doing so might change as the work domain becomes more mature. Prior studies of occupational emergence, by contrast, have overwhelmingly focused on interoccupational dynamics, namely, on how identities become legitimated via jurisdictional negotiations between occupational communities (Abbott, 1988;Azambuja & Islam, 2019;Bechky, 2003aBechky, , 2003bCovaleski, Dirsmith, & Rittenberg, 2003;Sturdy, Wright, & Wylie, 2016). Moreover, such studies often document legitimating efforts in deeply embedded occupational contexts-that is, in occupations that are striving to carve out space for a new work role from within the confines of a preexisting profession (Goodrick & Reay, 2010;Reay et al, 2006).…”