Betwixt and between: Liminality in new forms of employment

Journal title STUDI ORGANIZZATIVI
Author/s Maria Rita Tagliaventi, Donato Cutolo
Publishing Year 2020 Issue 2020/1
Language Italian Pages 29 P. 38-66 File size 403 KB
DOI 10.3280/SO2020-001002
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

Emergent work processes have prompted a growing interest for liminality in organization studies. Liminality was originally conceived of in anthropology to express the transition from a previous state or role to a future one. In the organizational realm, contingent work, work at the boundaries across different organizations, assumption of more roles within an organization, multiple careers pathways, and the handling of unexpected events have been interpreted as liminal experiences and comprehended through this lens, which this paper intends to analyze. We first delve into the core elements of a liminal experience according to Victor Turner’s view, i.e., rites, ceremonies, and symbols signaling the beginning, unfolding, and end of the passage; different perceptions of space and time; the communitas that develops between individuals sharing the same transition; the construction of an anti-structure whose rules and routines differ from those pertaining to established structures; engagement in identity work to modify, revise, and form personal and social identities. Based on Turner’s elaboration, accounts of liminal experiences in organizational settings are examined to highlight similarities and differences. Finally, the need to bring to convergence the original elaboration of liminality with the potential for its enrichment offered by the interpretation of organizational phenomena is discussed.

Keywords: Liminality, work processes, identity work, temporary work, consultancy, learning, practice.

  1. Addabbo, T., Borghi, V. (2001). Riconoscere il lavoro: Una ricerca sulle lavoratrici con contratti di collaborazione nella Provincia di Modena. Milano: Franco Angeli.
  2. Adorno, G. (2015). “Between Two Worlds: Liminality and Late-Stage Cancer-Directed Therapy”. OMEGA- Journal of Death and Dying, 71(2), 99–125.
  3. Alboher, M. (2012). One person/multiple careers: The original guide to the slash/career. New York: Warner Business Books
  4. Alvesson, M. (2001). “Knowledge Work: Ambiguity, Image and Identity”. Human Relations, 54(7), 863–886.
  5. Arthur, M. B., Rousseau, D. M. (1996). “A Career Lexicon for the 21st Century”. Academy of Management Perspectives, 10(4), 28–39.
  6. Arthur, M. B., Rousseau, D. M. (2001). The boundaryless career: A new employment principle for a new organizational era. New York, N.Y.; Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  7. Atkinson, S., Robson, M. (2012). “Arts and health as a practice of liminality: Managing the spaces of transformation for social and emotional wellbeing with primary school children”. Health e Place, 18(6), 1348–1355.
  8. Bamber, M., Allen-Collinson, J., McCormack, J. (2017). “Occupational limbo, transitional liminality and permanent liminality: New conceptual distinctions”. Human Relations, 70(12), 1514–1537.
  9. Barley, S. R., Kunda, G. (2001). “Bringing Work Back In”. Organization Science, 12(1), 76–95.
  10. Barley, S. R., Kunda, G. (2004). Gurus, hired guns, and warm bodies: Itinerant experts in a knowlege economy. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.
  11. Bigger, S. (2009). “Victor Turner, liminality, and cultural performance”. Journal of Beliefs e Values, 30(2), 209–212.
  12. Blank, R. M. (1998). “Contingent work in a changing labor market”. In R. B. Freeman, P. Gottschalk, Generating jobs: How to increase demand for less-skilled workers (pp. 258–294). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
  13. Boland, T. (2013). “Towards an anthropology of critique: The modern experience of liminality and crisis”. Anthropological Theory, 13(3), 222–239.
  14. Bologna, S. (2007). Ceti medi senza futuro? Scritti, appunti sul lavoro e altro. Roma: Derive e Approdi.
  15. Borg, E., Soderlund, J. (2015). “The nature and development of liminality competence: Narratives from a study of mobile project workers”. Journal of Workplace Learning, 27(3), 176–192.
  16. Brown, B., Huszar, K., Chapman, R. (2017). “‘Betwixt and between’; liminality in recovery stories from people with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) or chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS)”. Sociology of Health e Illness, 39(5), 696–710.
  17. Cappelli, P. (1999). “Career Jobs are Dead”. California Management Review, 42(1), 146–167.
  18. Caza, B. B., Moss, S., Vough, H. (2018). “From Synchronizing to Harmonizing: The Process of Authenticating Multiple Work Identities”. Administrative Science Quarterly, 63(4), 703–745.
  19. Conroy, S. A., O’Leary-Kelly, A. M. (2014). “Letting Go and Moving On: Work-Related Identity Loss and Recovery”. Academy of Management Review, 39(1), 67–87.
  20. Cook-Sather, A. (2006). “Newly Betwixt and Between: Revising Liminality in the Context of a Teacher Preparation Program”. Anthropology Education Quarterly, 37(2), 110–127.
  21. Cunha, M. P., Guimarães-Costa, N., Rego, A., Clegg, S. R. (2010). “Leading and Following (Un)ethically in Limen”. Journal of Business Ethics, 97(2), 189–206.
  22. Czarniawska, B., Mazza, C. (2003). “Consulting as a Liminal Space”. Human Relations, 56(3), 267–290.
  23. Czarniawska, B., Mazza, C. (2012). Consultants and clients from constructivist perspectives. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
  24. Davis-Blake, A., Broschak, J. P. (2009). “Outsourcing and the Changing Nature of Work”. Annual Review of Sociology, 35(1), 321–340.
  25. Davis-Blake, A., Uzzi, B. (1993). “Determinants of Employment Externalization: A Study of Temporary Workers and Independent Contractors”. Administrative Science Quarterly, 38(2), 195.
  26. De Stefano, V. (2016). “The rise of the" just-in time workforce": on demand work, crowdwork, and Labor protection in the" gig economy"”. Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal, 37(3), 461–471.
  27. Demetry, D. (2017). “Pop-Up to Professional: Emerging Entrepreneurial Identity and Evolving Vocabularies of Motive”. Academy of Management Discoveries, 3(2), 187–207.
  28. Dumaine, B., Labate, J. (1992). “Is big still good?” Fortune, 125(8), 50–55.
  29. Ellis, N., Ybema, S. (2010). “Marketing Identities: Shifting Circles of Identification in Inter-organizational Relationships”. Organization Studies, 31(3), 279–305.
  30. Felde, L. K. H. (2011). “I take a small amount of the real product”: Elevated cholesterol and everyday medical reasoning in liminal space. Health, 15(6), 604–619.
  31. Folta, T. B., Delmar, F., Wennberg, K. (2010). “Hybrid Entrepreneurship”. Management Science, 56(2), 253–269.
  32. Garcia-Lorenzo, L., Donnelly, P., Sell-Trujillo, L., Imas, J. M. (2018). “Liminal Entrepreneuring: The Creative Practices of Nascent Necessity Entrepreneurs”. Organization Studies, 39(2–3), 373–395.
  33. Garsten, C. (1999). “Betwixt and between: Temporary Employees as Liminal Subjects in Flexible Organizations”. Organization Studies, 20(4), 601–617.
  34. Greenhalgh, T., e Peacock, R. (2005). “Effectiveness and efficiency of search methods in systematic reviews of complex evidence: Audit of primary sources”. BMJ, 331(7524), 1064–1065.
  35. Gulbrandsen, M. (2005). “ But Peter’s in it for the money”--the liminality of entrepreneurial scientists. VEST: Journal of Science e Technology Studies, 18(1/2), 49–75.
  36. Hawkins, B., Edwards, G. (2015). “Managing the monsters of doubt: Liminality, threshold concepts and leadership learning”. Management Learning, 46(1), 24–43.
  37. Hoyer, P., Steyaert, C. (2015). “Narrative identity construction in times of career change: Taking note of unconscious desires”. Human Relations, 68(12), 1837–1863.
  38. Huang, W.-J., Xiao, H., Wang, S. (2018). “Airports as liminal space”. Annals of Tourism Research, 70, 1–13.
  39. Ibarra, H., Obodaru, O. (2016). “Betwixt and between identities: Liminal experience in contemporary careers”. Research in Organizational Behavior, 36, 47–64.
  40. John, G. (2001). “Alternative Cultural Heterotopia and the Liminoid Body: Beyond Turner at ConFest”. The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 12(1), 47–66.
  41. Kellerman, A. (2008). “International airports: Passengers in an environment of ‘authorities.’” Mobilities, 3(1), 161–178.
  42. Kornberger, M., Justesen, L., Mouritsen, J. (2011). “When you make manager, we put a big mountain in front of you”: An ethnography of managers in a Big 4 Accounting Firm. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 36(8), 514–533.
  43. Kunda, G., Barley, S. R., Evans, J. (2002). “Why Do Contractors Contract? The Experience of Highly Skilled Technical Professionals in a Contingent Labor Market”. ILR Review, 55(2), 234–261.
  44. Küpers, W. (2011). “Dancing on the līmen~~~ Embodied and creative inter-places as thresholds of be (com) ing: Phenomenological perspectives on liminality and transitional spaces in organisation and leadership”. Tamara: Journal for Critical Organization Inquiry, 9(3–4).
  45. La Rosa, M. (1997). Sociologia del lavoro. Milano: Jaca Book.
  46. La Rosa, M. (2005). Immateriale, produzione, lavoro. Sociologia Del Lavoro, 99, 25–30.
  47. Ladge, J. J., Clair, J. A., Greenberg, D. (2012). “Cross-Domain Identity Transition during Liminal Periods: Constructing Multiple Selves as Professional and Mother during Pregnancy”. Academy of Management Journal, 55(6), 1449–1471.
  48. Land, R., Rattray, J., Vivian, P. (2014). “Learning in the liminal space: a semiotic approach to threshold concepts”. Higher Education, 67(2), 199–217.
  49. Magatti, M. (2009). Libertà immaginaria: Le illusioni del capitalismo tecno-nichilista (1. ed. in "Campi del sapere."). Milano: Feltrinelli.
  50. Manyika, J., Lund, S., Bughin, J., Robinson, K. (2016). Independent work: Choice, necessity, and the gig economy. McKinsey Global Institute.
  51. Nag, R., Corley, K. G., Gioia, D. A. (2007). “The intersection of organizational identity, knowledge, and practice: Attempting strategic change via knowledge grafting”. Academy of Management Journal, 50(4), 821–847.
  52. Nambisan, S., Siegel, D., Kenney, M. (2018). “On open innovation, platforms, and entrepreneurship”. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, 12(3), 354–368.
  53. O’Loughlin, D. M., Szmigin, I., McEachern, M. G., Barbosa, B., Karantinou, K., e Fernández-Moya, M. E. (2017). “Man Thou Art Dust: Rites of Passage in Austere Times”. Sociology, 51(5), 1050–1066.
  54. Pace, M., Pallister-Wilkins, P. (2018). “EU–Hamas actors in a state of permanent liminality”. Journal of International Relations and Development, 21(1), 223–246.
  55. Paton, S., Hodgson, D. (2016). “Project managers on the edge: Liminality and identity in the management of technical work”. New Technology, Work and Employment, 31(1), 26–40.
  56. Petriglieri, G., Ashford, S. J., Wrzesniewski, A. (2018). “Agony and Ecstasy in the Gig Economy: Cultivating Holding Environments for Precarious and Personalized Work Identities”. Administrative Science Quarterly, 64(1), 124–170.
  57. Petriglieri, G., Petriglieri, J. L., Wood, J. D. (2017). “Fast Tracks and Inner Journeys: Crafting Portable Selves for Contemporary Careers”. Administrative Science Quarterly, 63(3), 479–525
  58. Powley, E. H. (2009). “Reclaiming resilience and safety: Resilience activation in the critical period of crisis”. Human Relations, 62(9), 1289–1326.
  59. Pritchard, A., Morgan, N. (2006). “Hotel Babylon? Exploring hotels as liminal sites of transition and transgression”. Tourism Management, 27(5), 762–772.
  60. Raffiee, J., Feng, J. (2014). “Should I Quit My Day Job?: A Hybrid Path to Entrepreneurship”. Academy of Management Journal, 57(4), 936–963.
  61. Ranci, C., Di Maria, L., Lembi, P., Pavolini, E. (2008). “Come cambia il lavoro autonomo tra vecchi e nuovi profili”. In A. Bagnasco (Ed.), Ceto medio. Perché e come occuparsene. Una ricerca del Consiglio Italiano per le Scienze Sociali. (pp. 211–253). Bologna: Il Mulino.
  62. Richter, L. (2016). “On the edge of existence: Malian migrants in the maghreb”. Culture Unbound, 8(1), 74–87.
  63. Rosso, B. D., Dekas, K. H., Wrzesniewski, A. (2010). “On the meaning of work: A theoretical integration and review”. Research in Organizational Behavior, 30, 91–127.
  64. Rullani, E., Paiola, M., Barbieri, P., Sebastiani, R. (2005). Intelligenza terziaria, motore dell’economia. Alla ricerca dell’Italia che innova. Milano: Franco Angeli
  65. Ryan, A. (2018). “Guiding and enabling liminal experiences between business and arts organizations operating in a sponsorship relationship”. Human Relations, 72(2), 344–369
  66. Söderlund, J., Borg, E. (2018). “Liminality in Management and Organization Studies: Process, Position and Place: Liminality in Management and Organization Studies”. International Journal of Management Reviews, 20(4), 880–902.
  67. Sturdy, A., Schwarz, M., Spicer, A. (2006). “Guess who’s coming to dinner? Structures and uses of liminality in strategic management consultancy”. Human Relations, 59(7), 929–960.
  68. Sundararajan, A. (2016). The sharing economy: The end of employment and the rise of crowd-based capitalism. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
  69. Sveningsson, S., Alvesson, M. (2003). “Managing Managerial Identities: Organizational Fragmentation, Discourse and Identity Struggle”. Human Relations, 56(10), 1163–1193.
  70. Swan, J., Scarbrough, H., Ziebro, M. (2016). “Liminal roles as a source of creative agency in management: The case of knowledge-sharing communities”. Human Relations, 69(3), 781–811.
  71. Szakolczai, A. (2009). “Liminality and experience: Structuring transitory situations and transformative events”. International Political Anthropology, 2(1), 141–172.
  72. Tempest, S., Starkey, K. (2004). “The Effects of Liminality on Individual and Organizational Learning”. Organization Studies, 25(4), 507–527.
  73. Tempest, S., Starkey, K., Ennew, C. (2007). “In the Death Zone: A study of limits in the 1996 Mount Everest disaster”. Human Relations, 60(7), 1039–1064.
  74. Teo, W. L., Lee, M., Lim, W.-S. (2017). T”he relational activation of resilience model: How leadership activates resilience in an organizational crisis”. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 25(3), 136–147.
  75. Thomassen, B. (2009). “The uses and meanings of liminality”. International Political Anthropology, 2(1), 5–27.
  76. Thomassen, B. (2015). “Thinking with liminalitY”. In Á. Horváth, H. Wydra, e B. Thomassen (Eds.), Breaking boundaries: varieties of liminality. New York: Berghahn Books.
  77. Thompson, K. (2007). “Liminality as a descriptor for the cancer experience”. Illness Crisis and Loss, 15(4), 333–351.
  78. Turner, V. (1967). “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage”. In The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (pp. 93–111). Itacha: Cornell University Press.
  79. Turner, V. (1969). The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure. London: Routledge.
  80. Turner, V. (1974a). “Liminal to liminoid, in play, flow, and ritual: an essay in comparative symbology”. Rice Institute Pamphlet-Rice University Studies, 60(3).
  81. Turner, V. (1974b). Dramas, fields and metaphors. Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca: Cornell University Press
  82. Van Gennep, A. (1961). The rites of passage (17. pr). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  83. Vesala, H., Tuomivaara, S. (2018). “Experimenting with work practices in a liminal space: A working period in a rural archipelago”. Human Relations, 71(10), 1371–1394.
  84. von Hippel, C., Mangum, S. L., Greenberger, D. B., Heneman, R. L., Skoglind, J. D. (1997). “Temporary Employment: Can Organizations and Employees Both Win?” Academy of Management Perspectives, 11(1), 93–104.
  85. Whyte, W. H. (1956). The organization man. New York: Simon, Schuster.
  86. Wilhoit, E. D. (2017). “‘My drive is my sacred time’: commuting as routine liminality”. Culture and Organization, 23(4), 263–276.
  87. Winkler, I., Mahmood, M. K. (2015). “The Liminality of Temporary Agency Work: Exploring the Dimensions of Danish Temporary Agency Workers’ Liminal Experience”. Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies, 5(1), 51.
  88. Wood, P. (2012). “Blogs as Liminal Space: Student Teachers at the Threshold”. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 21(1), 85–99.
  89. Wright, C. (2008). “Reinventing human resource management: Business partners, internal consultants and the limits to professionalization”. Human Relations, 61(8), 1063–1086.
  90. Zabusky, S. E., Barley, S. R. (1997). “You can’t be a stone if you’re cement”: re-evaluating the emic identities of scientists in organizations. In B. M. Staw e L. L. Cummings (Eds.), Research in Organizational Behavior (Vol. 19, pp. 361–404). Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press.
  91. Zanini, A., Fadini, U. (2001). Lessico postfordista: Dizionario di idee della mutazione. Milano: Feltrinelli.

  • Posizionamenti liminali tra autonomia e dipendenza. Il caso del settore bancario e assicurativo Andrea Bottalico, Annalisa Murgia, in STUDI ORGANIZZATIVI 2/2023 pp.35
    DOI: 10.3280/SO2022-002002

Maria Rita Tagliaventi, Donato Cutolo, Betwixt and between: la liminalità nelle nuove forme di lavoro in "STUDI ORGANIZZATIVI " 1/2020, pp 38-66, DOI: 10.3280/SO2020-001002