Year
2023
Authors
ANCELIN-BOURGUIGNON Annick, AZAMBUJA Ricardo, ISLAM Gazi
Abstract
Focusing on boundaries as the outcomes of, rather than only as constraints upon, everyday practices, and drawing on an ethnographic study across multiple sites of a Brazilian audit firm, we examine middle managers’ construction, maintenance and adjustment of boundaries. We show how middle managers fluidly manipulate boundaries’ visibility and permeability to achieve specific purposes, and how different configurations of these elements generate various boundary work practices. Middle managers are both obstructing and facilitating boundary-crossing – demonstrating that, in contrast to prior research, both orientations can be enacted by the same actor according to his or her purposes.
AZAMBUJA, R., ISLAM, G. et ANCELIN-BOURGUIGNON, A. (2023). Walling In and Walling Out: Middle Managers’ Boundary Work. Journal of Management Studies, 60(7), pp. 1819-1854.