Sustaining Coordination Beyond Formal Structures: Middle Managers’ Boundary Work During Continuous Organizational Restructuring

Sammanfattning

Organizations increasingly operate under conditions of continuous and overlapping restructuring, while still being expected to maintain continuity in their everyday work. Existing research on organizational change has largely emphasized episodic models of change and vertical implementation, leaving limited understanding of how coordination is sustained when restructuring becomes ongoing and formal arrangements provide insufficient guidance. This study examines how middle managers sustain coordination across organizational boundaries under continuous organizational restructuring in a specialized municipal child and family services unit in a Nordic context. Based on a qualitative case study and drawing on the theoretical frameworks of boundary work and temporal perspective, the study shows that middle managers sustained coordination not primarily through formal authority, but through ongoing interpretation, translation, dialogue and lateral coordination. Coordination emerged as a relational accomplishment: lateral interaction functioned as collaborative boundary work through which fragmented responsibilities and relationships were repeatedly reconnected, becoming a practical infrastructure for everyday coordination. Middle managers emerged as vulnerable change intermediaries who translated formal decisions into workable practice and helped employees orient themselves in a present shaped by anticipated future disruption, while they themselves often lacked sufficient information and experienced limited influence over decisions they were expected to communicate. Continuous restructuring was experienced as an ongoing temporal condition in which waiting, anticipation and repeated adjustments became embedded in everyday organizing. Finally, the study identifies a resilience paradox: participants described service continuity as being maintained through shielding, buffering and compensatory effort, while these practices also placed strain on employees and middle managers and therefore risked weakening the human, relational and professional resources required for future coordination. The study contributes to research on organizational change, boundary work, temporality and middle management by showing how coordination under conditions of continuous restructuring is sustained beyond formal structures, and what is gradually worn down in the process.