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Jesselton Journal of Educators and Scholars

Abstract

This study examines the strategic role of frontline sales personnel within semiconductor manufacturing environments characterized by technological volatility, operational interdependence, and evolving customer demands. Drawing upon emergent strategy, strategy-as-practice, and organizational sensemaking perspectives, the study explores how frontline personnel contribute to organizational responsiveness and strategy formation beyond conventional execution-oriented roles. A qualitative interpretive research design grounded in pragmatism and symbolic interactionism was adopted. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews involving 12 participants engaged in semiconductor manufacturing sales, customer coordination, and managerial activities in Japan. The findings reveal that frontline personnel function as strategically embedded organizational actors who contribute to operational sensing, customer interpretation, adaptive coordination, and situated strategic responsiveness. Frontline interaction enabled organizations to identify emerging operational disruptions, customer dissatisfaction, and production instability before formal managerial recognition occurred. The findings further demonstrate that strategy formation within semiconductor manufacturing environments frequently emerges through decentralized operational adaptation and frontline interaction rather than exclusively through deliberate managerial planning processes. However, decentralized responsiveness simultaneously generated coordination tension, interpretive inconsistency, and operational instability across organizational layers. The study contributes to emergent strategy and strategy-as-practice literature by demonstrating how strategy formation becomes operationally embedded within frontline customer interaction under conditions of technological uncertainty.

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