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The purpose of this paper is to re-conceptualise “good” qualitative research by discussing the intersection between “good” qualitative research and different identity states of “good” qualitative researcher. It uses the anthropological concept of liminality and related concept of limbo to help illustrate the implications of this intersection.

A reflexive and personal confessional account is provided of the author’s “living in” the liminal transition of the identity states from full-time PhD student to full-time early career researcher, questioning the author’s experiences in relation to others and the implications for the social construction of “good” qualitative research.

“Good” qualitative research is not just what to do but how to be. “PhD student” is a defined and temporary transitional liminal identity state. It has a clear point of separation (acceptance and registration of student status) and aggregation (“good” qualitative research signed of through thesis and viva). Contrasting with this is the “early career researcher” identity state, any point of aggregation towards “established researcher” is predicated on the unpredictability of publication and delivering impact indicators.

The paper demonstrates unsettling and in-betweenness of “good” qualitative research intersecting with the experience and composition of being a “good” qualitative researcher in the academy. It is important for debates regarding the qualities of academic development from PhD student to established researcher.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the phenomenon of burnout during early career among knowledge workers in information technology (IT) services industry in India.

The grounded theory research design was used to explore the research phenomenon. The study was based on the analysis of 43 in-depth interviews from the employees, managers and human resource professionals in IT services industry in India. Purposeful and theoretical sampling designs were used to locate the participants for the study. Grounded theory analytical procedures – open, axial and selective coding – were used to analyze and interpret the interview narratives. Atlas ti version 5.0. was used for qualitative data analysis.

The analysis of the interviews with the young knowledge workers reveal the following as the reasons for their burnout during early career: poor integration with the job and the organization at large, underemployment, stressful job and exhausting work environment, fear and insecurity of replacement of talent and downsizing. Strategies are discussed to deal with burnout situations among the young knowledge workers for individual and organizational well-being.

The findings of the study are applicable to organizations such as the IT services industry and thus the research outcome cannot be generalized. The study includes lived experiences of employees only during their early career.

The findings are relevant and useful in the practice domain as they are grounded in field reality. It provides directions for managerial and organizational practices in preventing burnout in early career among knowledge workers.

The paper is original and the present study is among the first attempts to investigate the nature of burnout through qualitative inquiry.

The purpose of this paper is to present a retrospective of the career life of Michael Driver, from the time of his Princeton graduate studies and early faculty years at Purdue University through the over three decades he spent at USC.

The history and development of his theoretical and research interests are presented, as well as the many contributions he made to both management consulting and the education of MBA students. His 1970s role in the founding and development of the Careers Division of the Academy of Management and his contributions to career research are highlighted and illuminate one of the critical periods in the renewal of the field. His orientation towards complexity and integration stand out as characteristics that positively impact theory building and research.

Michael Driver's career life was one of depth, scope, growth, and continuity. As a humanist, he would want us to not only continue our pursuits to better understand the complexities of human behavior, but to integrate them into something more meaningful.

This retrospective provides insight into the history and development of Mike Driver's theoretical and research interests and underscores his many contributions. The essay also highlights the history of career studies during the renewal period of the 1970s and 1980s. Hopefully, Mike Driver's legacy will inspire younger scholars to extend the field and carry it forward.

The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the moderating effect of career stage on the relationship between job embeddedness and innovation-related behaviour (IRB).

Data were collected from a sample of 310 Chinese media organisation employees and were analysed using moderated structural equation modelling.

Career stage significantly moderated the relationship between job embeddedness and IRB; individuals who experienced high job embeddedness in their early career stage were found to be engaged in more IRBs than those who experienced low job embeddedness in their early career stage. Moreover, the author also found that individuals who experienced high job embeddedness at mid-late career stages were less engaged in IRB, as compared to those at earlier career stages.

These findings contribute to the understanding of the relationship between employee job embeddedness and IRB at different career stages. The findings are limited by the cross-sectional nature of the data.

This study demonstrates that individuals at a mid-late career stage may define their work roles differently to those at an early career stage. Employers often expect individuals in the mid-late career stage to facilitate the work of others and to assist junior colleagues in their professional growth (Super et al., 1996).

Numerous studies have explored international students' and graduates' experiences around the globe but with less emphasis on exploring international academics' experiences. Internationalisation of higher education is not only about international students, it also includes mobility of academic staff members. Therefore, this chapter reflects on my ups and downs as well as many other opportunities that I gained in a privileged journey as an international early-career academic from Malaysia. The chapter starts with my personal experiences of how I identify myself as an international academic, the motivations to migrate, professional challenges that I face not only as an international academic but also as an early-career academic, the strategies that I adopted to overcome the challenges and how I self-created opportunities not only for myself but also for other colleagues – international academics and early-career academics. I will end the chapter with significant successes that came my way.

Doctoral education (DE) is central to the development and application of operations management (OM) thinking. The European Doctoral Educational Network (EDEN) seminar on research methodology in OM is a structured initiative developed in 1999 by European Operations Management Association (EurOMA) and European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management (EIASM). This intensive five-day seminar has run annually since and, to date, has engaged 486 students. The purpose of this paper is to ask: what role has the OM EDEN seminar played in the formation and academic career development of doctoral researchers, and how has it contributed to the development of EurOMA as a community of practice?

The authors developed a retrospective case on the design, launch and growth of the OM EDEN seminar employing two data gathering methods (collecting secondary and archival data, and a survey of four selected seminar participants) and a social network analysis.

The EDEN seminar is an effective educational intervention in developing doctoral researchers and their subsequent academic careers. The seminar has also contributed to EurOMA as a community of practice, bringing faculty together to teach, write and publish leading edge contributions in research methods for OM.

The case is focused on the OM EDEN seminar only, within which the survey is limited to four of the early participants. While another set of participants might respond differently in detail, the authors’ expectation is that participant perception of the role of the seminar would not change. The paper provides an exemplar for European academic associations to guide how they might explore the formation and academic career development of doctoral candidates within a community of practice.

The seminar merits the ongoing support of EurOMA and EIASM, not just in educating doctoral students but also in bringing faculty together to publish leading edge contributions to the OM domain.

The paper draws on the areas of student formation, academic career development and communities of practice to illustrate the role played by the OM EDEN seminar.

This paper is the first description, analysis and reflection on the role played by the OM EDEN seminar.

This study aimed to investigate the sensemaking strategies employed by early-career employees working within organizationally constrained environments.

Grounded in the sensemaking-as-accomplishment framework, a longitudinal multi-case study was conducted, involving three early-career employees. These participants were interviewed multiple times concerning tasks they themselves identified as anomalous and ambiguous.

The study's findings illuminate how early-career employees utilize sensemaking strategies to accomplish anomalous-ambiguous tasks. These strategies are interwoven with deliberate efforts to mitigate organizational constraints that exist in the organization or arise during the execution of complex tasks.

Notable limitation pertains to the time gap between task completion and the interviews. Conducting real-time interviews concurrently with task execution or immediately afterward was not feasible due to constraints in participant availability. This research has implications for organizational learning initiatives, particularly those encompassing employee-driven self-learning components. Insights derived from studies like this can inform the development of effective self-learning schemes within organizations.

Previous sensemaking research focused on what takes place in high-reliability organizations. This study explored sensemaking strategies in workplaces that are organizationally constrained.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the training needs of early career researchers (ECRs) in British research-intensive universities. This paper presents a new measurement scale constructed based on the Vitae Researcher Development Framework (a national framework in the UK to help researchers plan their training and development pathways) that disseminates ECRs’ training needs according to the four vitae development domains.

This paper discusses the result of a survey organised among ECRs who were asked to fill-in an online questionnaire, which included a newly developed measurement scale. Training needs are analysed based on 57 respondents working in British research-intensive universities and having obtained their PhDs not more than five years prior to the survey.

This paper offers an insight into the experiences of ECRs in research-intensive universities in relation to their training needs, which are very much centred around the notion of becoming a subject-specific expert, who is able to attract research funding and lead and manage these projects, including the successful supervision of students.

The current academic environment is extremely competitive, and as in other segments of the labour market, it is vital that ECRs recognise the need of continuous training to maintain their competitive status in the knowledge-based economy. This paper is original, as it disseminates a new measurement scale and provides fresh empirical results on the training needs of ECRs in British research-intensive universities.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an emerging framework for university libraries’ research and reference services, which aims to strengthen partnerships between research information specialists and early career researchers (ECRs).

The conceptual model used in this paper was originally developed from a constructivist grounded theory study, analyzing data from a sample of ECRs across multiple disciplines at two universities and contextualized by a review of recent research into ECRs’ information experiences, and researcher–librarian partnerships in experiential learning spaces within and beyond libraries.

This paper provides a review of the literature on one aspect of the knowledge ecosystem model relevant to research information specialists: tangible forms of information such as texts, tools, humans, cultures and environments encountered during informal learning experiences in six spaces: professional development programs, formal coursework, events, community, home and social media.

This paper is a catalyst for discussions and research into how research information specialists can facilitate access to the forms of information and learning experienced by ECRs, and what research information specialists can do with tangible information to respond to ECRs needs for experiential learning.

As the previous study found that ECRs perceived their knowledge as vital resources toward their research career progression, it would be useful for research information specialists to understand and design services paying attention to the importance of ECRs’ initial encounters with tangible information to create the knowledge they need.

Working toward improved engagement and partnership through increased awareness and understanding of informed learning experiences between ECRs, their mentors and other developers and research librarians/information specialists can result in higher quality development and communication of new research, which can impact on society’s innovation and advancement.

The new integrative framework presented in this paper can assist in terms of identifying what informs ECRs professional development toward strengthening ECR and librarian/information specialist partnerships.

The aging research community and current research accountability frameworks raise concerns about developing future researchers who have the capacity and commitment to undertake and lead quality research in the future. The aim of this paper is to focus on the support that Australian universities currently provide to build the capacity of their ECR staff and how ECRs are experiencing this support.

Email interviews were used with early career education researchers (ECRs) to ask them how they experienced the research support structures provided by their institutions.

It was found that the anxiety and frustration some ECRs feel about their research careers may stem from the appropriateness or otherwise of the kinds of immediate goals they are choosing for themselves and, perhaps more important, the extent to which they see themselves working in isolation from their colleagues.

While different kinds of material support, such as reduced teaching loads and access to internal grant funds will always be important, it is argued that more attention needs to be given to realistic goal-setting for ECRs and a more patient, long-term approach to producing high-quality research.

Developing a sustainable research community means building a supportive environment in which ECRs can achieve satisfaction and success. The research presented in this paper seeks to contribute to this goal by trying to learn more about the support ECRs currently experience in Australian universities.