Search results

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the practices mobile project workers rely upon to deal with their liminal work situation, i.e. a work situation in which they are “in-between” and do not have a clear long-term belonging to any specific organisation or project.

The study employs a qualitative approach and draws upon in-depth interviews with 24 engineers working for one of Scandinavia's leading technical consultancies. The aim of the qualitative data analysis was to identify a set of commonalities and differences in their experiences and ways of dealing with liminality.

The data indicate that mobile project workers experience their liminality in two separate dimensions; one which is primarily technical and task related, and one that is predominantly group related and social. These types of liminality are dealt with either actively, to lower or handle the ambiguity in the situation, or passively when the individual waits for the situation to be dealt with by others. Based on these two dimensions and types, the paper identifies and discusses four kinds of liminality practices.

The paper demonstrates the importance of focusing on individuals in project-based work, and specifically how they deal with work in-between. The paper shows when and how individuals make use of different liminality practices in their work, and calls for further research on the different skill sets and competencies that are needed to deal with liminality.

By identifying four liminality practices applied in situations signified by the experience of being in-between, this study offers an important contribution to the literature on flexible and mobile work conditions. Thus, the paper contributes to the knowledge of threshold-like employment positions that denotes the everyday work situation for an increasing number of individuals engaged in knowledge-intensive and project-based work.

This paper aims to present findings from an interpretative study documenting how mobile project workers develop their conceptions of work performed in liminal (in-between) positions. The overall purpose of the paper is to elucidate how people in time-limited and ambiguous work positions develop competences to manage their dynamic work conditions.

This research relies on two narratives of mobile project workers drawn from a larger longitudinal study. The empirical material includes diaries and multiple interviews. The analysis takes a narrative approach and identifies how and when the mobile project workers enhance their level of liminality competence.

Three processes were identified as significant in developing higher liminality competence: understanding the value of in-betweenness, embracing the role as an inside-outsider and translating the liminal experience through reflexivity.

The paper demonstrates the need for employers to support individuals in passing through the three processes and to support thoughtful mobility across different project settings to improve the liminality competence of their employees.

In the dual ambition of offering insights based on interpretative research on competence and putting greater emphasis on people working in in-between positions, this study enhances the understanding of how individuals develop their conceptions of work in general, and their conceptions of liminality at work in particular.

This paper aims to investigate the experiences of permanent liminality of academics and the associated multidimensional processes of identity negotiation.

The article draws upon a three-and-a-half-year at-home ethnography. The first author – as insider, participant and researcher – investigated the consequences of an organizational redesign that pushed members of a local university department into a situation of permanent liminality.

The paper describes how academics simultaneously followed multiple trajectories in their identity negotiation as a response to ongoing experiences of ambiguity, disorientation, powerlessness and loss of status.

Management decisions in higher education institutions based on administrative concerns can have adverse effects for academics, particularly when such decisions disturb, complicate or even render impossible identification processes. University managers need to realize and to respond to the struggle of academics getting lost in an endless quest for defining who they are.

The paper highlights the dual character of identity negotiation in conditions of permanent liminality as unresolved identity work through simultaneous identification and dis-identification. It further shows the multidimensionality of this identity work and argues that identity negotiation as a response to perpetual liminality is informed by notions of struggle and notions of opportunity.

This paper aims to investigate how consumption linked with life transitions can differ in its potential to bring about ongoing liminality. By examining how consumers can draw on overlapping systems of resources, different ways in which consumers negotiate ongoing liminality following the transition to motherhood are identified.

The authors conducted an interpretive, exploratory study using in-depth phenomenological interviews with 23 South Asian mothers living in the UK. The sample consisted of mothers at different stages of motherhood.

Following life transitions, consumers may encounter liminal hotspots at the intersection of overlapping systems of resources. The findings examine two liminal hotspots with differing potential to produce ongoing liminality. The study shows how consumers navigate these liminal hotspots in different ways, by accepting, rejecting and amalgamating the resources at hand.

The research sample could have been more diverse; future research could examine liminal hotspots relating to different minority groups and life transitions.

Marketers need to examine the different ways in which consumers draw on different systems of resources following life transitions. The paper includes implications for how marketers segment, target and market to ethnic minority consumers.

Due to increasingly fluid social conditions, there are likely to be growing numbers of consumers who experience ongoing liminality following life transitions. A preliminary framework is presented outlining different ways that consumers negotiate ongoing liminality by drawing on overlapping systems of resources, broadening the understanding of the role that marketplace resources play beyond life transitions.

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 paper aims at revealing the process of identity reconstruction for individuals who have acquired sensory disabilities, as well as the contribution of consumption to this process.

The data was collected through both interviews conducted in France and autobiographical accounts.

When disability occurs, individuals go through a rite of passage that shapes their identity reconstruction process. Two forms of liminality appear: acute and sustained liminality. These phases can foster or hamper individuals’ identity reconstruction.

The mechanisms leading from one stage of the identity reconstruction process to another should be deepened through further research.

Given the fluctuating behaviors of consumers with disabilities, especially in view of their identity reconstruction process, this research encourages retailers and public policy actors not to consider them as a homogeneous consumer segment.

While scholars dealing with consumers with disabilities have mainly focused on the accessibility of the marketplace, this research disentangles their identity issues.

The purpose of this paper is to provide readers with a deeper theoretical understanding of liminality, its utility in understanding the experiences of graduate student researchers and how being explicit about the liminal nature of the graduate student experience can be especially impactful for students from marginalized communities.

This conceptual paper examines liminality as an essential component of researcher identity development and how an awareness of this liminality relates to effective and inclusive librarian support of graduate student researchers. The authors explore the affective and academic implications of operating in this liminal state and how direct acknowledgment of this inbetweenness, especially within the spaces of classroom instruction and research consultations, can be leveraged as an inclusive practice. The authors ground this exploration in critical pedagogy.

Graduate student researchers often operate in an unacknowledged liminal state, which causes students to question the importance of their previous knowledge and life experiences and feel discouraged and uncertain about their potential place in academia. This is particularly damaging to students from communities that have been traditionally marginalized and excluded from higher education.

The authors are liaison librarians to education and health sciences at a large, minority-serving, urban research institution in the western USA and draw on their experience supporting students in disciplines that include many students returning to graduate studies after substantial professional experience. This work makes a contribution to library and information studies by focusing on the concept of liminality. The authors offer a conceptual perspective on liminality relative to librarians and their support role in the graduate student experience.

The purpose of this paper is to apply the theoretical lens of liminality to a consideration of non-traditional entrepreneurial locations. The study exemplifies such locations by empirically exploring self-storage based businesses: that is, businesses that operate for a significant number of hours each week from self-storage facilities.

The study draws on interviews with entrepreneurs operating self-storage based businesses and operators of self-storage facilities. The interview data is supported by site visits, businesses’ websites, promotional and marketing materials and press coverage.

Consistent with the liminal lens, entrepreneurs view their time operating from self-storage as a transitional phase. They do not suffer the high levels of uncertainty and unsettledness usually associated with liminality. However, they experience anxiety related to perceptions of operating from a business location outside the mainstream. Whilst the entrepreneurs benefit from additional services provided by the self-storage operators, this may be at the expense of extra “liminal” work and anxiety experienced by the storage operators’ staff.

The study contributes to entrepreneurship by answering Steyaert and Katz’s (2004) call for studies in unfamiliar places and spaces. The authors identify a number of ways in which liminality can arise when considering entrepreneurial locations. Drawing on extant entrepreneurial studies, the authors theorise that idiosyncratic characteristics of such spaces attract entrepreneurs with particular personal characteristics and needs, who will in turn be influenced by those spaces. In the case of self-storage facilities, the liminal space allows trepidatious entrepreneurs to “try on” (Hawkins and Edwards, 2015, p. 39) operating a new venture.

The aim of this paper is to introduce the concept of liminality as a theoretical lens to explore and discuss how challenges, accompanied by frustrations and confusion, can enable significant learning in a teamwork setting. Student team narratives on how they handle challenges they face working to solve real-world problems are used as the basis for the discussion.

This is a case study using student narratives from an interdisciplinary master course at a Norwegian university.

We argue that the concept of liminality can support teachers and student teams to understand and handle challenges in ways that enable significant learning and innovation. Practical implications for teachers and facilitators are provided at the end of the paper.

This paper offers new lenses to understand the team- and learning processes in courses where students work with real-world problems. If the teams are able to stay open in the liminality phase it enables significant learning and innovation. This capacity is valuable in a time where teams face complexity and uncertainty is becoming more of a standard than an exception, both in higher education and in working life.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the benefits and drawbacks that strategically imposed liminality inflicts upon inter-organizational digitalization efforts within the different phases of its utilization.

This study empirically examines digitalization in a large multinational manufacturing company, Sandvik Machining Solutions, using data that were collected through interviews and a qualitative research design.

This study shows that a liminal space separated from the structures in which one is supposed to inflict changes increases the risk of developing an incompatible system that will be rejected in the incorporation phase. An inter-organizational perspective on liminality thus contributes to our understanding of the benefits and drawbacks that liminal space can pose for the organizations involved.

The study suggests that, in the separation phase, driving change processes by creating liminal spaces could be a way to loosen up rigid resource structures and circumvent network over-embeddedness. Finding the right amount of freedom, ambiguity and community within the liminal space is, however, essential for the transition of information as well as the incorporation of the imposed changes.

Introducing an inter-organizational perspective on liminality contributes to our understanding of the stress that liminal space can place on individuals as well as the individual organization.