Middle manager roles in strategy implementation facing uncertainty environment: case study in a banking institution

Objectives of the study: Understand how do middle managers play their roles in implementing strategy in a turbulent environment. Methodology/approach: Case study in the Superintendence of a Large Banking Institution. Data collection through interviews, document analysis and direct observation. Data analysis based on comparative analysis (pattern matching) and narrative analysis. Originality/relevance: From the roles of the middle manager (MM) in strategy implementation, the covid-19 pandemic caused changes in the macro and micro scenario, demanding to revisit the classic concepts about the middle manager, bringing a new look to possible changes in its performance. Main results: We noted the predominance of top-down strategic management in the superintendence of the financial institution analyzed, in which MMs play a fundamental role through the operationalization of practices such as proposing new actions and transmitting information with insights to senior management, facilitating the process adaptation and implementation of deliberate strategies amid the period of environmental turbulence arising from the Covid-19 pandemic. This role avoided significant losses in the activities carried out by the financial institution, in addition to enabling an integrated decision-making process due to the articulating role of the MM. Academic contributions: Besides the importance of the middle manager as a strategy articulator, we highlight communication as a theoretical element that was not included in the literature on the roles of the middle manager and that emerged from the data, showing that communication is intertwined in the strategy implementation process, being a potential contribution to the Floyd and Wooldridge (1992) model.