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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.

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 conceptual, multi-voiced paper aims to collectively explore and theorize family entrepreneuring, which is a research stream dedicated to investigating the emergence and becoming of entrepreneurial phenomena in business families and family firms.

Because of the novelty of this research stream, the authors asked 20 scholars in entrepreneurship and family business to reflect on topics, methods and issues that should be addressed to move this field forward.

Authors highlight key challenges and point to new research directions for understanding family entrepreneuring in relation to issues such as agency, processualism and context.

This study offers a compilation of multiple perspectives and leverage recent developments in the fields of entrepreneurship and family business to advance research on family entrepreneuring.

The purpose of this article is to posit an alternative learning design approach to the technology-led magnification and multiplication of learning and to the linearity of curricular design approaches such as a constructive alignment. Learning design ecosystem thinking creates complex and interactive networks of activity that engage the widest span of the community in addressing critical pedagogical challenges. They identify the pinch-points where negative engagements become structured into the student experience and design pathways for students to navigate their way through the uncertainty and transitions of higher education at-scale.

It is a conceptual paper drawing on a deep and critical engagement of literature, a reflexive approach to the dominant paradigms and informed by practice.

Learning design ecosystems create spaces within at-scale education for deep learning to occur. They are not easy to design or maintain. They are epistemically and pedagogically complex, especially when deployed within the structures of an institution. As Gough (2013) argues, complexity reduction should not be the sole purpose of designing an educational experience and the transitional journey into and through complexity that students studying in these ecosystems take can engender them with resonant, deeply human and transdisciplinary graduate capabilities that will shape their career journey.

The paper is theoretical in nature (although underpinned by rigorous evaluation of practice). There are limitations in scope in part defined by the amorphous definitions of scale. It is also limited to the contexts of higher education although it is not bound to them.

This paper challenges the dialectic that argues for a complexity reduction in higher education and posits the benefits of complexity, connection and transition in the design and delivery of education at-scale.

The notion of deeper experiences of Hindu devotees inspired by divine images and sacred places has roots in the historical past, going back to the Vedic period (ca. 2500 BCE), where we find rich literature on performances, rituals and merits of pilgrimages. Considered the bridge between human beings and divinities, the experiences received are the resultant ‘blissful fruit’ (phala) that helps the spiritual healing of pilgrims through awakening conscience and understanding the manifested meanings, symbolism, purposes and gains. This system can be viewed concerning the ‘texts’ (the mythology, ancient text and related narratives) and the ‘context’ (contemporality and living tradition). These rules and performances have regional perspectives of distinctions, but they also carry the sense of universality, i.e. locality (sthānic) and universality (sarvavyāpika) interfaces. The devout Hindus reflect their experiences in conception, perception, reception and co-sharedness – altogether making the wholistic network of belief systems, i.e. the religious wholes in Hindu society. This chapter deals with four aspects: the historical and cultural contexts, the meanings and merits received, the motives and the journey and interfacing experiences. The study is based on the experiential and questionnaire-based exposition and interviews of pilgrims at nine holy places during 2015–2019 on various festive occasions and is illustrated with ancient texts and treatises. The sacred cities included are Prayagraj, Varanasi, Gaya, Ayodhya, Vindhyachal, Ganga Sagar, Chitrakut, Mathura Vrindavana and Bodh Gaya.

This study aims to investigate how university students experience a skill transformation process aligned with the sustainable development goals (SDGs). This transformation occurs through their participation in a service-learning programme alongside an international volunteering project. The theoretical framework for understanding this skill transformation process is based on the “rite of passage”.

Qualitative methodology is adopted by conducting 23 online surveys with volunteers (virtual and onsite) and five with coordinators across the rite of passage phases. Volunteering was carried out in five Mayan indigenous communities in Mexico as part of an international cooperation project with the goals of supporting community-based tourism development and strengthening volunteers’ skills in accordance with the SDGs.

Results show that international volunteering programmes for university students significantly enhance their interpersonal and professional skills, demonstrating strong potential for implementing the SDGs. These programmes provide learning and education opportunities for both volunteers and local communities. Volunteers gain a broader perspective on gender equality and cultural barriers. Additionally, volunteering supports sustainable tourism, economic worth and collaboration among institutions. Both volunteers’ personal characteristics (educational level and sociocultural context), as well as their sociocultural context, influenced the perception of the skill transformation process and learning about the SDGs. Finally, a new educational university programme in volunteering aligned with SDGs is proposed.

This research examines the practical ramifications of incorporating volunteer programmes into university courses. Universities must include these initiatives in their educational systems as a means of enhancing student learning.

A new educational university programme in volunteering aligned with SDGs is proposed. This study suggests a shift in university mindset, as well as increased funding for training and adherence to the SDGs.

This study pioneers the rite of passage framework in an international volunteer tourism project facilitated by universities, emphasizing volunteering as a valuable tool for SDG implementation, considering the interrelationships between objectives.

Co-production has received increasing attention from managers and researchers in public services. In the health care sector, co-production has become a by-word for the meaningful engagement of patients yet there is still a lack of knowledge around what works when co-producing services. The paper sets out a set of pragmatic principles which may guide anyone embarking on co-producing health care services, and provides an illustration of a co-produced Young People’s Health Research Group in England. We conclude by outlining some learning points which are useful when establishing co-production projects.

The purpose of this study is to review literature on the relationship between leadership and workplace learning, to critically analyze and discuss findings and to suggest future research paths based on the synthesis.

This study applied a refined literature review process leading to a selection of 40 articles, which originated from 14 internationally acclaimed journals.

When explaining leadership influence regarding individual and team learning, the concepts of role modeling behavior, relational support and negotiation of meaning is significant. If leaders provide support, show exemplary behavior and negotiate individual arrangements with employees, workplace learning development is positively affected.

Future studies should focus on empirical cases further illustrating how the leader–employee relationship is formed in practice, to further understand differences in leadership influence on employee workplace learning.

The gathered knowledge implicates that carefully designed leadership training programs and personalized work arrangements between leader and employees are beneficial for leader’s ability to influence employee workplace learning.

The reviewed studies were solely published in top management journals, which resulted in an original literature selection. This study also discusses implicit or articulated assumptions about the view of learning in the selected studies, offering additional understanding about the underlying learning views in leadership–workplace learning research.

Using a panel of over 433,000 college students from over 600 institutions of higher education in the USA, we investigate students’ opinions of leadership skill development during their undergraduate tenure.

The data used in this analysis come from the Higher Education Research Institute, which runs the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) housed at the University of California, Los Angeles. Among others, the CIRP administers two surveys known as The Freshman Survey (TFS) and the College Senior Survey (CSS).

The present research supports the extant literature and conventional wisdom of academic and student affairs professionals with regards to engagement in leadership classes or training where students have an opportunity to increase their knowledge bases through course content, and when there are opportunities for them to apply leadership principles, the students are more likely to report an increase in leadership capacity upon completion of their collegiate degree.

If colleges and universities are serious about fulfilling their espoused visions, then it is essential that awareness of leadership courses and applied opportunities be heightened and made a strategic priority to ensure resources are allocated in appropriate places to support these key efforts. It also suggests greater collaboration between academic and student affairs, as well as other departments (e.g. athletics and centers), is needed, as well as prioritizing experiential learning.