Liminality In Organization Studies

In a time of flexible and mutable work arrangements, there is hardly a domain of organizing that has not been affected by liminality. Temporary workers who switch companies based on projects, consultants who operate at the boundaries between the consultant and the client companies, or ‘hybrid entrepreneurs’ who start new ventures, while still keeping their previous job, are examples of liminality in organizations. Liminality is also felt by managers who handle interorganizational relationships within customer-supplier networks or scientists who, albeit affiliated with R&D units, have strong ties with their scientific communities, acknowledging that they belong to neither setting thoroughly. Precious hints for enriching our comprehension of liminality in organizational settings can be conveyed by the reflection that has flourished in different fields. This book advances knowledge of liminality management by elaborating on a model that puts together aspects of the liminal process that have been mostly described in a separate way so far, benefiting from the input provided by experience in sociology, medicine, and education. Through the articulation of a model that accounts for the antecedents, content, and consequences of liminality in organizations, the book intends to prompt quantitative research on this topic. It will be of value to those interested in organizational behavior, organization and management, marketing, sociology of work, and sociology of organizations.

Describing the field, spanning individual, organisation, societal and cultural perspectives in a cross-disciplinary manner, this is the premier reference tool for students, lecturers, academics and practitioners to gather knowledge about a range of important topics from the perspective of organisation studies.

Conceived as the meanings that individuals attach to their selves, a substantial stockpile of theory related to identities accumulated across the arts, social sciences, and humanities over many decades continues to nourish contemporary research on self-identities in organizations. In times which are more reflexive, narcissistic, and fluid, the identities of participants in organizations are increasingly less fixed and less certain, making identity issues both more salient and more interesting. Particular attention has been given to processes of identity construction, often styled 'identity work'. Research has focused on how, why, and when such processes occur, and their implications for organizing and individual, group, and organizational outcomes. This has resulted in a burgeoning stream of research from discursive, dramaturgical, symbolic, socio-cognitive, and psychodynamic perspectives that most often casts individuals' efforts to fabricate identities as intentional, relational, and consequential. Seemingly intractable debates centred on the nature of identities - their relative stability or fluidity, whether they are best regarded as coherent or fractured, positive (or not), and how they are fabricated within relations of power - combined with other conceptual issues continue to invigorate the field. However, these debates have also led to some scepticism regarding the future potential of identities research. Yet as the chapters in this Handbook demonstrate, there are considerable grounds for optimism that identity, as root metaphor, nexus concept, and means to bridge levels of analysis has significant potential to generate multiple compelling streams of theorizing in organization and management studies.

How can artist-scientist collaboration be of value to science and technology organizations? This innovative book is one of the first to address this question and the emerging field of art-science collaboration through an organizational and managerial lens. With extensive experience collaborating with and advising institutions to develop artist in residency programs, the author highlights how art-science collaboration is such a powerful opportunity for forward-thinking consultants, managers and institutions. Using real-life examples alongside cutting edge research, this book presents a number of cases where these interactions have fostered creativity and led to heightened innovation and value for organizations. As well as creating a blueprint for successful partnerships it provides insights into the managerial and practical issues when creating art-science programs. Invaluable to scholars and practitioners interested in the potential of art-science collaboration, the reader will be shown how to take an innovative approach to creativity in their organization or research, and the ways in which art-science collaborations can mutually benefit artists, scientists and companies alike.

This volume offers an interdisciplinary re-thinking about what it means to be "the marginal" within society. Using a supple notion of liminality as its framework, this book concurrently challenges Turner's symbolic anthropology, while celebrating its continued influence and recasting into an interdisciplinary landscape.

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy in Organization Studies provides a wide-ranging overview of the significance of philosophy in organizations. The volume brings together a veritable "who’s-who" of scholars that are acclaimed international experts in their specialist subject within organizational studies and philosophy. The contributions to this collection are grouped into three distinct sections: Foundations - exploring philosophical building blocks with which organizational researchers need to become familiar. Theories - representing some of the dominant traditions in organizational studies, and how they are dealt with philosophically. Topics – examining the issues, themes and topics relevant to understanding how philosophy infuses organization studies. Primarily aimed at students and academics associated with business schools and organizational research, The Routledge Companion to Philosophy in Organization Studies is a valuable reference source for anyone engaged in this field.

The book introduces a preliminary, integrative conceptual framework on the intersections between management and social justice with a view that the quest for social justice is not an endpoint rather an ongoing journey. With contributions from management scholars and practitioners, it highlights, examines, and explores the continuities and discontinuities, gains and losses, and struggles and successes in this quest for reimagining organizations as sites and vehicles for advancing social justice in the world. To nurture and facilitate flourishing individuals and collectives, we need bolder, more innovative, and more creative models of engagement. Further, we need models for speaking and learning from different perspectives and building common ground through shared values of equity, connectivity, and compassion and moral expansiveness while recognizing the complexities of the world we inhabit via our organizations and the need to develop nuanced understandings of the same. Contributing authors address questions such as: Are social justice and management mutually exclusive concepts? How can we draw on effective management for advancing social justice aims? How do we bend the arc of organizational life towards more justice? What are the rights and obligations of organizations and their members to the world at large, and to their local communities and societies? Through its re-imagining of organizations and management as vehicles for social justice instead of just as tools of oppression, injustice, or regressive organizing in an extractive economy, this book brings together critical and positive organizational approaches challenging fundamental assumptions about how our society, people’s collectives, and workplaces are organized with capacity building, incremental change, sustained change, institutionalized change, dynamic ongoing problem-solving/ assessment/ redesign, and more. Management scholars will learn the nuanced and complex intersections between management theories and practice and different types of justice/injustice in a global context both as antecedents to modern organizations and workplaces and the ways in which these intersectional actors advance and change the organizations and workplaces of the future.

This volume contains two Open Access chapters. Volume 64 of Research in the Sociology of Organizations takes stock of research on processes of inter-organizational collaboration and explores new topics that call for inquiry.