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Qualified immigrants (QIs) and their work experiences have been studied using a wide variety of theoretical approaches with divergent characteristics. This paper reviews theoretical progress and proposes directions for future research and practice.

Using relevant keywords, articles indexed by Web of Science in management, business, industrial relations and applied psychology were systematically searched for and analysed. In total, 60 theoretical articles published during 2008–2018 were included. The theoretical progress and future theoretical and practical challenges were organised based on the notions of equality, diversity and inclusion.

Eight theoretical approaches utilised to study QIs' work experiences were recognised: (1) human capital theory, (2) career capital theory, (3) theory of practice, (4) intersectionality, (5) social identity theory, (6) sensemaking, (7) cultural identity transition and (8) the career-centred approach. The contributions and limitations of each theoretical lens were then scrutinised. Overall, research on QIs still lacks a comprehensive theoretical framework. As a step towards that, the paper proposes considering the role of organisations and labour market intermediaries, strategic view over the immigrant workforce, agency–institution play, identity–capital play and host–immigrant play.

The focus is on theory development and empirical papers with no clear theoretical foundation are excluded.

This review is the first attempt to summarise and direct the divergent research on the topic. The main contribution is setting an agenda for future research, particularly by proposing the elements of a comprehensive theoretical framework for studying QIs in the workplace.

Modern careers are marked by periods of feeling betwixt, or “in-between,” – yet, there is no validated measure of this experience, recognized as subjective liminality. The present research aims to (1) operationalize subjective liminality and (2) develop and validate a scale to measure it.

A literature review was used to operationalize subjective liminality, and the scale validation was performed using four separate samples: 150 workers on M-Turk, 151 graduate and professional students at a large Midwestern University, 252 unemployed individuals in the US and Canada, and 416 full-time employed individuals in the US.

Subjective liminality was conceptualized as a second-order latent construct reflected by three dimensions: feelings of anxiety, ambiguity and reduced group identification. A 9-item scale was developed and validated to measure it.

This study clarifies and measures an emergent construct in the career transition and organizational change literature.

This article focuses on the leadership development of young adults. The topic is of significant importance as leadership identity tends to form early in life, and its long-term implications contribute to leadership formation. The objective of this study was to gain insights into how leadership is constructed in young adults and how it is manifested in their preferred leadership identity.

This research was approached from a constructivist perspective, utilizing discourse analysis. The authors conducted a study involving 24 written essays by young individuals with a business background, in which they shared their early leadership experiences. Drawing upon a modified life story interview structure, the authors meticulously analyzed the content.

The authors identified eight discourses clustered into two groups according to the types of leadership orientation: toward oneself and toward others. The discourses in the toward oneself group consist of leadership as taking responsibility, leadership as courage, manifesting personal strengths and as a role/status. The toward others group includes discourses approaching leadership as balancing directivity, coordinating and organizing work, personalized approach and as performance management.

The major methodological limitations stem from the qualitative design per se. The findings based on qualitative data have limits in generalizing.

The authors' findings have practical implications for educators. The authors propose the utilization of critical self-reflection on early leadership experiences and self-narration as effective tools in nurturing and developing young leaders.

This paper underscores the importance of educating young leaders, as they can create a positive impact on their subordinates and society as a whole. By providing them with leadership skills, the authors initiate a chain reaction of influence that extends through different levels of leadership, leading to significant social change.

The authors' originality and contribution to the literature on leadership development lies in showcasing the diversity of perspectives on leadership among participants sharing a similar background and developmental stage. This holds valuable implications for educators working with this cohort.

Academic interest in role changes of management accountants (MAs) has increased during the past two decades. Role changes imply identity reconstructions as they do not only require an external legitimacy, but professionals have to internalize a new role script. Thus, this paper aims to contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the ongoing changes concerning MAs by providing an identity perspective.

This paper systematically reviews the literature on the changing role of MAs from an identity perspective, based on a conclusive sample of 64 articles.

This review identified several external factors such as professional associations and educational institutions as well as organizational and individual factors that impact MAs’ identity and act as change drivers. MAs’ identity is linked with their image in the public and within the organization and is challenged by increasing demands, conflicting expectations and technological progress. Hence, the literature sample illustrates a fragmented and contradictory picture regarding the changes of MAs’ identities and roles and displays that the idea of a simple movement from one identity to another is misleading. Furthermore, the identity perspective offers new issues for management accounting research, practice and education such as nested identity, multiple or desired identities.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to review the literature of MAs’ changing identities and roles from an identity perspective. This perspective enables a novel focus on internal views, perceptions and internalized meanings of MAs connected with their role instead of exclusively debating changed external behavior expectations.

While women are increasingly in senior positions in accountancy firms, a century after gaining entry to this once exclusively male field, they are still struggling to achieve career success. The concept of possible selves and a model of career crafting are activated in an analysis of how a set of New Zealand professional accountants have pursued their careers. This paper aims to focus on how people actively craft career selves in the context of organisational and gendered constraints, some of which are self-imposed, and therefore, can be modified and revised.

Interviews with 36 male and female accounting professionals in New Zealand – 21 working in private firms and 15 in academia identify how careers are shaped by contexts, cultural understandings of gender, organisational structures within which accountants are located and wider environmental factors.

Women accountants in this study are both agential and responsive to a range of constraints they encounter. These women challenge the notion that professional achievement requires single minded allegiance to a career; their strategic career crafting demonstrates how career and family commitments are not irreconcilable but can be skilfully integrated to nurture multiple selves. Their strategies are considered alongside those of a comparable set of male accountants.

This paper contributes to the literature on possible selves and the complexity of gendered lives through the application of a career crafting matrix to explore how accounting professionals forge careers and construct multiple selves.

This study explores the role of previous occupational identity in the formation of the (new) teacher identity of vocational teachers. The focus is on how vocational teachers discover their teaching identity, how they describe the connection between their previous occupation and teacher identity and how they describe a competent member of the teaching community.

The theoretical approach is inspired by Communities of Practice (CoP) theory. More specifically, the realignment between socially demanded competence in the profession and personal experience as well as identification with the teaching community are discussed. The research material comes from 14 interviews with vocational teachers in different disciplines.

Findings indicate first that the process of professional identity (trans)formation was initiated by finding one's teaching self when the individuals became aware of their interest in teaching by discovering that they had already achieved some sort of teaching-related competence. Second, individuals had been connecting their professional identities – finding common competence between their previous occupation and the teaching role. Third, vocational teachers experienced legitimising their competence and their new identity with reference to what their new CoP instructed as important competence (regime of competence).

While teachers' vocational competence is not scrutinised, their teaching competence needs to be constantly proved. This imbalance often leads to teachers returning to an aspect of their identity that is well established – their vocational competence. Looking back to their occupational competences constitutes a realignment backwards, when teachers attempt to serve their new professional goal by drawing on old competence.

The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate the meaning of being a social entrepreneur in a society marked with multiple transitions. It aims to understand how theoretical concepts of social entrepreneurs, including common dichotomies between economic and social, collective and individual, reflect in social entrepreneurs’ rationale, values and identities.

The study used an exploratory and qualitative approach. Empirical data were gathered during 14 semi-structured interviews with Croatian social entrepreneurs. Thematic analysis was used as an analytical framework.

The findings suggest complexity of social entrepreneurs’ rationale and identities as they face challenges in balancing different goals. Democratic and participative governance appeared to be the weakest link of social enterprises. Identity of social entrepreneurs in the society of multiple transitions is fluid and changes through the continuum from pure social to pure commercial, from more related to civil society to more related to the market, from mostly individual to mostly collective.

The main limits of the study are related to sampling strategy and the small sample size. Generalization is limited by the nature of qualitative research and relies on analytical and naturalistic generalization.

The findings of the study may contribute to ecosystem development that would be more suitable for social enterprise realities in a specific context.

This paper focuses on the individual level and provides rare insights into social entrepreneurs’ rationale, values and identities.

The ideal self has had a place in management literature in recent years with reference to identity and role change. However, except for a JMD article in 2006, there has been little theorizing on the ideal self, which is often treated as a static construct. The purpose of this article is to update and refine the concept and explain the dynamic nature of the construct.

This conceptual paper is based on a review of the recent management and psychology literature related to the ideal self and its components.

The authors propose a dynamic theory of the emerging ideal self and delineate how its components evolve over time.

The ideal self, or one's personal vision, is a major motivator of learning and change and the sustainability of such efforts. The time dynamic theory would encourage and guide longitudinal research using better variables and measures as well as help in conceptualizing the role of socialization, social identity and life/career stages.

With a better theory of the ideal self, trainers, consultants, coaches and teachers can help people update their deep sense of purpose and the sustaining driver of learning and change the ideal self. It could help people and organizations address a major determinant of engagement.

This theory offers a temporal understanding of how the ideal self can motivate learning and change at different life and career eras, which can help in designing future research on identity-related transitions.