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With the rise of the gig economy, management positions are increasingly staffed with flexible labor, so-called interim managers. They plunge into organizations for a limited period, operating in a liminal position as partly insider, partly outsider. Although several contributions to their client organizations are acknowledged, it is unknown how the interim manager’s knowledge from previous assignments is made useful in the new context under these particular working conditions. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to increase the understanding of how the interim manager’s knowledge is transferred to the client organization while operating from a liminal position.

This paper presents an interview-based multiple case study of six interim assignments where knowledge transfer is considered a social and context-dependent process.

The findings unveil the multifaceted nature of the liminal position, which consists of task orientation, time limitation, political detachment and cultural distance. These facets contribute to knowledge transfer in terms of new shared understandings and joint interests, which in turn might create new practices that augment continuous knowledge-sharing patterns.

The results contribute to the research on flexible work arrangements by shedding light on how the liminal position, predominantly depicted as an obstacle for the individual, might facilitate knowledge transfer. Through the process of knowledge generation, it is shown how a short-term engagement might enable the organization to increase its knowledge over time.

This study examines how the collective construction of career sustainability takes place through a career community of interim managers.

We draw on 31 interviews with interim managers who are part of a career community in the form of a professional association of interim managers in France.

The findings show the importance of career communities as a vehicle through which to create a sustainable career. More specifically, we show that occupational career communities provide mutual and reciprocal career support, collective being and belonging through sense-making as well as collective learning leading to the collective creation of a sustainable career.

We add to the literature on sustainable careers by providing a collective community-level analysis and make a theoretical contribution by using the concept of career communities in shedding light on the career sustainability of interim managers. In the light of the increase in non-standard forms of employment, career communities might become an interesting vehicle for career management and development.

The purpose of this paper is to outline what it takes to be a successful interim manager in today's pharmaceutical industry, based on the experiences of two people currently in the role.

The paper explains when it is and is not appropriate to employ an interim manager, and details the main advantages and disadvantages from the points of view of both the company and interim manager involved.

The paper describes the main challenges as: working across a range of time zones; traveling between countries; juggling different and demanding clients; recognizing that one has been brought in to solve a specific problem, not to become a permanent employee; guiding without interfering; managing client expectations; and coping with down‐time when the contract finishes.

The paper demonstrates how interns may help companies to solve a particular problem quickly and easily.

The paper explains that, when companies are feeling the pinch and may have frozen their recruitment of permanent employees, interims offer immediate support and expertise but are dispensable.

The paper contains much to interest companies thinking of taking on an interim and individuals considering interim management as a career.

This paper reviews literature on interim leadership and management through the lens of effective interim performance. The purpose of this review is to advance understanding of interim assignment performance and the antecedent individual psychological characteristics of effective interim leaders and managers, to improve the practice of managing interim leaders from a human resources (HR) perspective.

The paper reports a targeted review of the literature on interim leadership and management.

The main proposition from this review is that the influence of individual factors on interim performance operates within the stages and contexts of assignments. Accordingly, the authors propose a framework of the demands on interim assignments (the interim assignment cycle), comprising stages of preparation, entry, delivery and exit. The paper subsequently reviews evidence of the potential individual characteristics (focussing on individual differences in personality, leadership approach, motivation and competencies) of effective preparation and entry to an assignment, actions and performance during an assignment and exit/disengagement.

The findings of the review have implications for the selection and placement of interims into organizations and their management once appointed.

The main original contribution of the paper is to provide a framework around which interim assignments can be modelled and better understood. The paper discusses implications for future research, theory and human resource management practice and calls for a renewed research effort in this critical area of management and leadership.

Leadership decisions are among the most vexing issues that face an alliance partnership. Permanent leaders imply expectations about their treatment as employees, even after they are no longer an ideal fit. Staffing from among the partners’ human resources assumes that talent is not in short supply and implies a potential favoritism in the operation of the alliance. Interim management offers a unique and superior, albeit not perfect, alternative. Interim leaders may be particularly effective at facilitating an alliance start‐up and when the alliance is to transition from one stage of the organization’s life cycle to the next.

There is no previous systematic and theoretical investigation of the interim CEO succession practice. This research attempts to fill the gap by studying this phenomenon and hence advance executive succession research/practice.

Based on agency theory, the authors propose a model and several propositions to predict what determines the origin of interim CEOs, the length of the interim tenure, and the career prospects for the interim CEO after the interim tenure.

Both firm performance and environmental uncertainty play an important role in the dynamic interim CEO succession process.

The paper provides the foundations for future empirical research on interim CEO succession.

Board members at companies experiencing sudden CEO departures should choose a loyal non‐aggressive veteran to be the interim CEO so as to minimize disruption and to smooth the transition. They should use caution when choosing an internal candidate because if such a candidate is not chosen to be the permanent CEO later, a talent may be lost.

The research is the first to systematically examine the phenomenon of interim CEOs. The authors make a unique contribution to the literature on CEO succession.

Examines several interim managerial appointments at Utah State University Libraries during the period 2000‐2002. Standard practices as illustrated in the literature of librarianship, education and business are compared with the actual experiences of nine individuals at the Utah State University. Costs and benefits to the organisation and to the employee are delineated.

The purpose of this study is to carry out a literature review on interim leadership and management focusing on interim assignment performance and the antecedent characteristics of effective interim leaders.

A targeted review of the literature on the literature on interim leadership and management is carried out and reported.

A cycle of interim assignments is proposed consisting of four stages, preparation, entry, delivery and exit. Individual characteristics seen as antecedents of effectiveness are then applied to each of these stages.

The interim assignment cycle proposed in this paper can help to address gaps in the literature and aid the development of methods and tools for selection of interims and management of effectiveness during assignments.

This paper has an original approach in providing a model through which interim assignments can be better understood.