53

This research focuses on assistant management roles in the management of service personnel of middle schools. Role theory is the starting point of our study. Research in this field clearly highlights the need for role adjustment. While capitalizing on this work, we enrich it with research on the roles of middle managers in the public sector. More specifically, in our analysis we examine the practices of five middle school assistant managers through a longitudinal study. Our work presents a middle manager whose action is characterized by role adjustment. We show how this adjustment results from demands for conformity. At the same time, these assistant managers benefit from a degree of autonomy allowing them to adapt to different contexts. Our thinking then leads us to propose the concept of mediation space as a means of managing this adjustment.