To what extent are students as middle managers at a training hotel involved in strategic decision making?

Abstract

Research has shown that middle managers can exert major upward or downward influence on their organisation's strategy. In the practice department of our hotel school, senior students act as managers to train managerial competences. To analyse if this reflects reality, I have researched whether student managers do have strategic influence. The research indicates that students carry out a substantial number of strategic tasks as part of their practical training. However these tasks do not fit with existing theoretical frameworks regarding middle managers' strategic influence. This might be explained by the fact that putting students in a training situation stimulates non-routinised sensemaking behaviour of student middle managers.