Against boundarylessness
The liminal career of the flexible employee
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20501136 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jens Budtz-Jørgensen (Copenhagen Business School), Christian Garmann Johnsen (0000-0002-9560-7790, Copenhagen Business School, corresponding author), Bent Sørensen (0000-0003-0503-5061, Copenhagen Business School), Bent Meier Sørensen (0000-0003-1019-1288, Copenhagen Business School) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 26 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 917-935 |
| Publication date | 2019-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Organization (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1350-5084 • E-ISSN: 1461-7323 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1350508418821005 |
| OpenAlex | W2885857634 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 10 |
| References cited | 68 |
This article extends the critique of the boundaryless career concept by focusing on how organizational members may experience boundaries as ambiguous within contemporary career development in organizations. As an alternative to the concept of the boundaryless career, we introduce that of the liminal career. We consider a liminal career as occurring when the normal career path within an organization becomes a state of ‘betwixt and between’, wherein distinctions between social domains and work roles become diffuse, indeterminate and difficult to comprehend. We engage with this concept in relation to three boundaries that remain central within career development: organizational boundaries establishing a distinction between that which is internal and external to the organization, hierarchical boundaries separating employees and managers, and functional boundaries demarcating different work domains. Using a case that illustrates how employees experience ambiguous organizational, hierarchical and functional boundaries, we argue that the concept of the liminal career captures the essence of situations in which there is a lack of clear categories, trajectories and schemes from which to structure career paths in organizations
Career development · Epistemology · Liminality · Pedagogy · Sociology · Computer Science · Gender Diversity and Inequality · Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior · Management and Organizational Studies
Career identities and Millennials’ response to the graduate transition to work
Temporary talent
‘When will you go back to “real” police work?’ The liminal nature of victim support police officers
Neither Traditional, Nor Protean
Towards a spatial understanding of identity play
Home and away
Toward a critical study of boundaries in and around organizations
Varieties of flexibilisation? The working lives of information and communications technology professionals in the United Kingdom and Germany
There and Back Again
A liminal duality of expert authority
The ritual process
The Precariat
Letting Go and Moving On
Liminality in Management and Organization Studies
The Human Capital Hoax
Boundaryless Careers
Betwixt and between
The Forest of Symbols
‘Moving to stay in the same place?’ Academics and theatrical artists as exemplars of the ‘mobile middle’
Is the high-involvement worker precarious or opportunistic? Hierarchical ambiguities in late capitalism
The Death of Unemployment and the Birth of Job-Seeking in Welfare Policy
Postscript on the Societies of Control
A Secular Age
Home and Work
Focus Groups in Social Research
Reflexive Historical Sociology
It's capitalism on coke!’
The Hermeneutics of Work
The boundaryless career
New directions for boundaryless careers
Psychological success and the boundaryless career
The New Spirit of Capitalism
From dividual and individual selves to porous subjects
Work/Family Border Theory
Expanding the boundaries of boundary theory
The career life of academics
Between asset and process
Being yourself ’ in the electronic sweatshop
Knowledge Work
Narrative identity construction in times of career change
Occupational limbo, transitional liminality and permanent liminality
Career scripts in clusters
Liminality, space and the importance of ‘transitory dwelling places’ at work
Have careers become boundaryless
Liminal roles as a source of creative agency in management
Liminality and the practices of identity reconstruction
Academic careers
The ‘bounded' career
Guess who's coming to dinner? Structures and uses of liminality in strategic management consultancy
The Ritualization of Strategy Workshops
You Can Checkout Anytime, but You Can Never Leave
Beyond dis-identification
Marketing Identities
Consulting as a Liminal Space
Contesting Time
Perspectives on the Study of Work-life Balance
The Rites of Passage
Neoliberalism and knowledge interests in boundaryless careers discourse
Flexible Firms and Labor Market Segmentation
Surf 's Up
Anthropology and its many modernities
| Unique citing works | 10 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2026 (6) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 10 |