The involvement of middle management in strategy development -Development and implementation of a foresight-based approach

In this paper, an approach is presented that describes how a foresight-based strategy development approach can be designed in order to leverage the potential of middle management. This approach is applied in strategy development to the supply chain management of a multinational manufacturing company. The case focuses on Asia, and includes 37 middle managers plus their staff - totalling approximately 70 employees - from 13 countries. The results indicate that top and middle management were willing to follow the highly structured process, contributing to strategy development in terms of ideas, data, time, resources and analytical work. The developed strategy integrated the middle management's perspective successfully and strategy implementation started immediately.