‘If I Don't Get That Belonging Among Us It All Falls Down’: How Middle Managers Experience Belonging Through Self and Others

Abstract Belonging at work is a fundamental yet complex experience, associated with acceptance, inclusion and recognition, and underpinned by relational dynamics in organizations. Despite increasing interest, little is known about how belonging is experienced by middle managers, a group positioned between hierarchical levels and responsible for others. Drawing on 22 semi‐structured interviews and two focus groups, this paper explores this issue. The findings show that managerial belonging is structured through two interrelated orientations: self‐focused and other‐orientated. Self‐focused belonging reflects managers’ experience through organizational alignment, role legitimacy and interpersonal relationships. Other‐orientated belonging captures how managers’ own sense of belonging is shaped through their perceptions of whether those they manage belong. Rather than operating separately, these orientations are mutually constitutive, producing a recursive dynamic in which managers evaluate their own belonging through the perceived belonging of their teams. This extends the notion of double‐relationality by showing how managers’ intermediary positioning can have recursive consequences for their own belonging. The paper contributes empirically by foregrounding middle managers as a distinct group within belonging research and conceptually by showing how managerial belonging can be recursively evaluated through managers’ perceptions of the belonging of those for whom they hold responsibility.