Abstract
While the notion of liminality has improved our understanding of individuals going through transition, its widespread use in a variety of organizational contexts has led to a dilution of the concept’s analytical precision. By analysing ‘liminoid’ transitions we simultaneously widen our field of vision and narrow down the precise meaning of the twin terms, liminal and liminoid. Following Turner’s original understanding, ‘liminality’ focuses on a pre-planned change of an individual within a conventional organizational structure, whereas liminoid addresses individuals seeking to make changes to the structure itself from ‘outside’. Through an ethnographic study of individuals in a UK-based social venture incubator, we address the question: what practices do individuals engaged in a liminoid transition adopt? Our analysis suggests that venturers deploy five practices: detaching and reorienting, exploring, structuring, compromising, and self-evaluating. We make three contributions. First, our empirical account of individuals’ practices provides a deeper insight into the specific social dynamics that unfold in a liminoid transition. Second, we contribute greater analytical precision and conceptual grounding for theorizing liminoid transition processes and practices by detailing their distinguishing features from liminal transitions in terms of motivation, context and conditions. Third, we contribute by discussing how different degrees of detachment from conventional organizational structures may impact the possibilities for social change and the personal lives of the transitioning individual.
Keywords
Introduction
The concept of liminality, defined as ‘the experience of being betwixt and between social roles and/or identities’ (Ibarra & Obodaru, 2016, p. 53; Turner, 1967, 1977a, 1977b; Van Gennep, 1960), is widely used in organization studies to analyse how individuals transition between different statuses, states and situations (Garsten, 1999; Söderlund & Borg, 2018). Liminality involves ‘anti-structure’, a temporary ‘dissolution of normative social structure’ (Turner, 1974, p. 60) where expectations are suspended, inversions of normal ways of doing things encouraged, and alternatives become possible. A liminality perspective has been particularly useful in developing better understandings of transitions in a range of organizational situations (Ibarra & Obodaru, 2016), such as new members’ initiation into existing structures or subsequent transitions to another role or position.
An unintended consequence of the popularity of the liminality concept is that it has strayed from its anthropological roots (Söderlund & Borg, 2018) and has been ‘stretched’ beyond its original conceptual boundaries, diluting its analytical precision (Ibarra & Obodaru, 2016). To reinfuse rigour into research on liminality and identity, Söderlund and Borg (2018) have identified three uses of the concept: liminality as process, position and place (cf. Ybema, Beech & Ellis, 2011), and Ibarra and Obodaru (2016) have compared highly institutionalized liminal experiences, which are embedded in strong support structures and shared cultural scripts, with contemporary, ‘under-institutionalized’ experiences of liminality, and their impacts on processes of identity construction.
In this paper, we seek further conceptual clarity by focusing on transition processes (Söderlund & Borg, 2018; Ybema et al., 2011) that resemble liminal experiences, but are also fundamentally distinct. Instead of those individuals who aspire to or are required to change themselves by moving from one position to another within an existing structure, as in liminal transitions, we examine individuals who aspire to bring about social change from outside established structures by devising new ‘patterns of thought, behavior, social relationships, institutions, and social structure to generate beneficial outcomes for individuals, communities, organizations, society, and/or the environment beyond the benefits for the instigators of such transformations’ (Stephan, Patterson, Kelly & Mair, 2016, p. 1252, emphasis added). Critical of the status quo, such individuals detach from their institutional embedding and enter an anti-structural condition that enables new ideas, relations and social structures. To address such transitions, this paper adopts and develops Turner’s (1974) concept of ‘liminoid’.
As a starting point for our analysis of liminoid transitions, we build on Turner’s (1974) brief outline of the distinction between liminal and liminoid phenomena, defining a liminoid transition as a process whereby individuals, motivated by social critique, detach from conventional organizational structures in order to change society. In contrast, as Turner (1974, p. 76) explained, liminality is an integral part of society and as such, it functions to maintain the status quo. Similar to some under-institutionalized liminal experiences (Ibarra & Obodaru, 2016), individuals in liminoid transitions embark on an open-ended transition that does not lead them in a carefully arranged and timely manner to ‘the next logical step in a role hierarchy’ (Ibarra & Obodaru, 2016, p. 47). However, unlike other under-institutionalized experiences, individuals undergoing liminoid transitions position themselves outside and against such structures. They are motivated by critique and aim to initiate and, ultimately, change structures, where the benefits, if realized, go beyond the individual (Stephan et al., 2016, p. 1252). Their efforts are not primarily self-oriented, but world-oriented: in liminal transitions the institution changes the individual, in liminoid transitions the individual changes the institution.
However, as Spiegel (2011) notes, we do not know how the process from social critique to the initiation of social change unfolds. This process is particularly significant and potentially fraught because in liminoid transitions new ideas must take root in an environment that is unlikely to be hospitable to them, because it is made up of the very structures that the new ideas are intended to replace. While the liminoid concept has previously been used to refer to particular experiences and circumstances (Turner, 1974), or ‘periods/spaces and the occurrences during and in those’ (Spiegel, 2011, p. 14), and a small number of organization studies have analysed it in terms of identities (Lê & Lander, 2023), positions (Daskalaki & Simosi, 2018) or conditions (Garcia-Lorenzo, Donnelly, Sell-Trujillo & Imas, 2018), we focus on the practices individuals engage in to enact social change. Practice research analyses how things ‘get done’ within particular contexts, recognizing that practices involve both routine execution and improvisation, and potentially the successive reconstitution of the contexts of which practices are a part (Gross & Geiger, 2017; Johannisson, 2011). While the transitional practices of liminal individuals have been well documented (e.g. Beech, 2011), in our study we analyse the different practices of liminoid individuals as they seek to initiate social change, and show how they shift and switch between them as they transition. We ask the following research question: What practices do individuals engaged in a liminoid transition adopt?
We address this question through an ethnographic study of individuals in a UK-based social venture incubator (the UK term for accelerator, Hallen, Cohen & Bingham, 2020). Social ventures are ‘initiatives’ that ‘pursue a social mission and ultimately transform their social environment’ (Mair, Battilana & Cardenas, 2012, p. 353). The study follows the twelve-month period of incubation, during which individuals were supported to create ventures capable of initiating the social change they sought. We initially approached the analysis of the ethnographic data using liminality theory: venturers’ transitions were infused with some of the anti-structural characteristics of liminality, such as the creation of time and space outside the norms of everyday life when and where alternatives to the norm are encouraged (Spiegel, 2011). However, liminality theory fell short in explaining venturers’ intentions to develop new organizational arrangements and social practices in ways that enable social change. Turner’s (1974) liminoid concept inspired us to explore the practices of venturers and to further develop our understanding of how individuals can move from an initial desire to bring about social change to initiating such change.
Our analysis allows us to make three contributions. First, our empirical account of the practices deployed by individuals, detached from conventional organizational structures, seeking to make social change provides new insights into the social dynamics that unfold in a liminoid transition. Second, we contribute greater analytical precision and conceptual grounding for theorizing liminoid transition processes and practices by carefully demarcating the distinction between liminoid and liminal transitions in terms of motivation, context and conditions. In doing so, we also clarify the uses to which the liminoid concept might be put. Third, we further contribute to extant theorizations of liminality processes and practices by discussing how different degrees of detachment from conventional organizational structures, ranging from the modest distance typical of liminal transitions, through partial or complete detachment in liminoid transitions, to the individual’s brutal separation from existing structures, may affect the possibilities for change and the personal lives of the individual. The analytical precision we achieve is bound to a specific problem in the world: how individuals detached from conventional organizational structures seek to bring about social change. Given that, as in Turner’s time, social life is seen to be beset with ‘injustices, inefficiencies, and immoralities’ (1974, p. 86), we believe it is timely to have clear and analytically precise conceptual resources with which to examine such world-oriented, change-focused individuals. Without an adequate theorization of those engaged in initiating change at the margins, which is often where radical change emerges (Turner, 1977a, p. 63), we may fail to understand their efforts and the context and conditions in which they work.
Literature Review
Individuals may seek to change society from a range of starting points and organizational settings and hope that their activity will ultimately have ‘mass effects’ (Turner, 1974, p. 85) in terms of the creation of new social practices. We focus on the concept of liminoid because, following Turner (1974, 1982, p. 51), it characterizes how individuals choose to detach themselves from the normative constraints of social structure in order to evaluate and critique the ‘performance’ of ‘social structure’ and, crucially, to attempt to transform it. We examine three areas of relevant research. First, we delineate the theoretical characteristics of liminal and liminoid experiences, drawing on a detailed analysis of Turner (1969, 1974, 1982) and more recent theoretical syntheses. Second, we examine research investigating the limen experiences of individuals engaged in changing organizational arrangements and personal identities. Third, we evaluate research illustrating some advantages that the liminoid concept brings to understanding individual-level transition experiences.
The liminoid–liminal distinction
While the concept of liminality has been widely adopted and applied in organization studies, the liminoid concept is largely unexplored. Before discussing and drawing inspiration from organization studies of liminal and liminoid transitions, we first go back to Turner’s original work. Despite voluminous use of the liminality concept (see reviews by Ibarra & Obodaru, 2016 and; Söderlund & Borg, 2018), the underlying motivation for Turner’s elaboration of Van Gennep’s (1960/1909) original concept (and, in his later writings, Turner’s introduction of liminoid) is typically overlooked. Understanding the rationale for introducing the concepts of liminality and liminoid will provide conceptual grounding for our theoretical argument.
Turner’s (1967, 1974, 1982) fundamental purpose was to account for processes of transition and the in-between time and space when and where the unquestioned grip of social structures on life is loosened. Turner considered the characteristic suspension and inversion of normative social structures as inherent to the dynamic process of their (re)formation. Societies ‘are periodically subjected to shocks and crises’ and ‘to the strains and tensions of adjustment to quotidian challenges from the biotic and social environments’ and require ‘maintenance’ through extant institutions, but also ‘creative adaptation to sudden or persisting environmental changes’ (Turner, 1977a, p. 63, emphasis added). The concepts of liminality and liminoid highlight how the suspension and reversal of the norm play out in different types of transition.
Individuals experiencing liminality become betwixt and between and find themselves ‘beyond the normative social structure’ (Turner, 1974, p. 59). Turner described this as ‘anti-structure’, where individuals experience ‘the liberation of human capacities of cognition, affect, volition, creativity, etc., from the normative constraints incumbent upon occupying a sequence of social statuses, enacting a multiplicity of social roles’ (1974, p. 76). And, although individuals are liberated, the experience is obligatory and takes place collectively. The norm reversals and inversions of these experiences ‘tend to compensate for rigidities or unfairnesses of normative structure’, and while they are ‘a kind of institutional capsule or pocket which contains the germ of future social developments, of societal change’, they ‘can never be much more than a subversive flicker’ which is ‘put into the service of normativeness almost as soon as it appears’ (Turner, 1974, p. 76).
Liminoid functions differently. Turner (1974) states that ‘Liminoid phenomena develop apart from the central economic and political processes, along the margins, in the interfaces and interstices of central and servicing institutions – they are plural, fragmentary, and experimental in character’ (p. 85, emphasis original). ‘A matter of choice not obligation’, they are ‘often parts of social critiques [. . .] exposing the injustices, inefficiencies, and immoralities of the mainstream economic and political structures and organizations’ (p. 86). Thus, Turner’s purpose was to recognize that while individuals were still released from everyday norms, these ‘inversions’ had a different social function. Rather than supporting and reinforcing, the lifting of constraints in liminoid experiences serves to subvert extant structures instrumentally and potentially generate social transformation.
Turner thus considers liminoid to be both similar to and different from the liminal: ‘“liminoid” resembles without being identical with “liminal”’ (1974, p. 64). As Spiegel (2011, p. 13) puts it, ‘both constitute spaces-apart and times-apart . . . within and during which alternatives to the norm are possible and indeed encouraged.’ However, while the reversal of the norm during a liminal transition, despite its subversive appearance, reinforces the status quo, liminoid transitions are distinct in that they are intrinsically inspired by a substantive critique of established structures and aim to actually change the status quo. Moreover, liminal transitions are part of a culturally designed and collectively orchestrated cycle of events, whereas liminoid transitions arise idiosyncratically and interstitially at the margins. Liminoid activities are thus unplanned and experimental in nature, occurring erratically around individual interests that may (or may not) eventually develop into shared understandings and practices: a liminoid transition’s outcomes are uncertain in terms of identity and aspirations for social change (for an overview of differences, see also Spiegel, 2011).
The uptake of Turner’s liminoid concept has been constrained by his commitment to a rather unhelpful categorical distinction between modern societies (Spiegel, 2011), where liminoid phenomena enabled radical change, and traditional societies, where liminal processes played a conservative role. For instance, in an early application of liminality in organization studies, Czarniawska and Mazza (2003, p. 267) considered Turner’s liminoid concept only to reject it. They recognized how useful the liminality concept could be for metaphorically depicting phenomena in the ‘confusion of spaces’ (p. 285) between organizations where ‘usual practice and order are suspended and replaced by new rites and rituals’, showing how a liminal space or a ‘liminal organization’ is created when consultants work with a client (p. 273, emphasis added). While addressing the social change typical of a liminoid transition here, they preferred to use the term liminality, stating that Turner’s definition of the two concepts was based on an outdated distinction between traditional and modern societies, and that Turner was judgemental in his belief in the socially generative potential of ‘creative communities’ and praise of liminoid phenomena (Czarniawska & Mazza, 2003, p. 271).
This is a critique that other scholars (Spiegel, 2011; Thomassen, 2009) have since taken up as a prompt to adapt rather than reject the whole thrust of Turner’s theorization. They defend the usefulness of Turner’s conceptualization of the liminal and the liminoid and the heuristic potential of the liminoid concept, with its focus on critique and social change, for understanding, for example, detached individuals seeking to create new organizational arrangements. At the same time, they dismiss Turner’s commitment to seeing the concepts in terms of an ‘oversimplified dichotomy’ (Thomassen, 2009, p. 15), two categories of experience, rather than as two ideal-type social situations representing the poles of a continuum of different experiences (Spiegel, 2011; see also Thomassen, 2009, p. 17). We agree that understanding the liminal and the liminoid as an analytical distinction, rather than as separable categories of empirical phenomena, allows us to break down the binary and consider combinations of the liminal and the liminoid. Such a view domesticates the liminoid and allows for the analysis of a wider range of transitions, settings, experiences and activities.
In the field of organization studies, neglect of the liminoid concept has resulted in a dominant focus on liminal rather than liminoid transition processes and thus an analytical interest in change as a primarily self-oriented rather than world-oriented process. Research centres on individuals’ subjective experiences and personal identity formation rather than their change efforts and activities. Two recent reviews that have noted features of contemporary organizational life producing distinctive types of liminal experiences illustrate this point. Ibarra and Obodaru (2016) argue that liminal experiences happen within ‘an increasingly precarious and fluctuating career landscape’ (p. 48) and as a result, are ‘increasingly under-institutionalized’ (p. 47) and subjectively more challenging; that is, are marked by an absence of clear organizational structures, temporal boundaries and shared cultural scripts. Söderlund and Borg (2018, p. 880, p. 897) similarly observe that liminal experiences occur as part of an ‘increasingly temporary and dynamic work life’ and stress the need to capture ‘the complexities of change and development at work’ through use of the original anthropological ideas (i.e. Turner, 1967, 1977a, 1977b; Van Gennep, 1960). Ibarra and Obodaru (2016) highlight the riskiness and creativity of identity play involved in under-institutionalized experiences, and Söderlund and Borg (2018, p. 897) emphasize how such experiences ‘[motivate] the liminal subject to question taken-for-granted facts and to explore new realities with a more open and “alternative” mindset’. An empirical study of teaching-only staff at research-intensive universities in the UK by Bamber, Allen-Collinson and McCormack (2017) makes a further conceptual distinction, between liminality – both transitional and permanent – and occupational limbo. Whereas transitional liminality refers to individuals moving between identities, and permanent liminality describes a condition of ‘ongoing ambiguity and in-betweenness’ (Bamber et al., 2017, p. 1532), limbo is not liminality at all, because it is a state of being locked into an undesired status and, correspondingly, locked out from membership of a more valorized status, a condition that can only be exited through profound intervention.
These studies offer useful typologies that broaden our view of transitional processes. However, their focus on self-oriented transitions does not account for the world-oriented critique and change efforts that characterize a liminoid transition. Although some features of the liminal experiences they analyse (new ideas/perspectives, experimental/open mindset, lack of structure, clear timeframes and exit routes) overlap with Turner’s (1974) analysis of liminoid phenomena, they do not adopt the term or develop their analysis systematically. We believe that a liminoid conceptualization can better appreciate and explain these features.
Liminal transition studies
Prior research that treats liminality as a process (Söderlund & Borg, 2018) by focusing on individuals who are transitionally liminal and engaged with change (Ybema et al., 2011) provides examples and evidence of individuals’ personal growth and competence development as they try to find solutions to their own individual or organizational problems (Borg & Söderlund, 2015; Di Domenico, Daniel, & Nunan, 2014). Describing two people going through a turbulent transition period in their working lives, Beech (2011) analyses the process as one of liminal identity reconstruction in which the individuals use experimentation, recognition and reflection as the key practices. These studies show how liminal experiences create the potential for change, because individuals are changed by them, and they carry their new learning and competences beyond these specific experiences.
Other studies have addressed the capacity of individual liminal experiences to initiate organizational change, rather than focus on individual growth. Henfridsson and Yoo’s (2014, p. 933) study of institutional entrepreneurs analyses how they generate innovations. They describe ambiguity as a catalyst: when individuals note ‘unsatisfactory performance of the current solution’ to a given problem and recognize that it might be improved by an alternative (Henfridsson & Yoo, 2014, p. 945). While the individuals they study are still securely employed and salaried, they position ‘themselves at the periphery of established practices’ (Henfridsson & Yoo, 2014, p. 940, emphasis original) in order to benefit from being released from normative constraints. Gross and Geiger’s (2017) study of a small entrepreneurial organization analyses how collective management practices shift when periods of radical environmental change fundamentally challenge the core business model. Marked by both anxiety and creativity, they define these as ‘periods of liminality’ since few attributes of the past or anticipated future make sense (p. 187). They identify a sequence of practices that collectively shift the firm’s orientation from technological innovation to customer satisfaction. Similarly, Muhr, De Cock, Twardowska and Volkmann’s (2019) study of a lone venturer’s identity struggles depicts a shift away from innovation resulting from a liminal experience. Here, the venturer’s sense of self fluctuates with the fortunes of his venture, and as the product innovation ultimately failed and the business is forced to merely re-sell others’ products, the sought-for identity as entrepreneur remained out of reach, creating ‘a perpetual liminal condition for identity work’ (Muhr et al., 2019, p. 579).
Unlike Turner’s theorization of liminal transitions, the individuals described in the cases above voluntarily enter an in-between situation embark on a path of change that is not neatly laid out for them. The confrontation with external threats destabilizes established structures, creates ambiguity and places individuals on the periphery, from where they begin to engage in practices such as critiquing conventions, exploring alternatives and seeking change. Taken together, studies of transitional liminality thus show how liminal experiences can emerge from self- or situation-critique from which individuals can develop new individual identities and capacities and realize new organizational practices or product innovations.
Organization studies of liminality may have come close to what Turner defined as conceptual territory of the liminoid, but there is only partial overlap. Instead of change directed at serving the needs of the self and/or the organization, liminoid transitions begin with ‘parts of social critiques or even revolutionary manifestoes’ that seek to expose and address the ‘injustices, inefficiencies, and immoralities’ of mainstream organizations (Turner, 1974, p. 86). And while the individual innovators are ‘at the periphery of established practices’ (Henfridsson & Yoo, 2014, p. 940, emphasis original), with the exception of Muhr et al.’s (2019) entrepreneur who was not institutionally embedded, they retain the security and legitimacy of their organizational roles. So what of individuals who move further to the margins, at once detached from ‘central and servicing institutions’ (Turner, 1974, p. 85) and liberated from the normative constraints of organizational attachment, and who seek to bring about change because their critique ‘of the current solution’ (Henfridsson & Yoo, 2014, p. 945) cannot be accommodated by the ‘corporate group’ (Turner, 1974, p. 75)? We now consider liminoid research that has addressed this question.
Liminoid studies
The few studies that have adopted liminoid as a central concept in their analysis bring in aspects of Turner’s liminoid concept by zooming in on individuals’ experimentation outside institutional settings although, we suggest, they do not make full use of the concept’s original meaning.
Focusing on individuals in the margins, outside established institutions, Daskalaki and Simosi (2018) and Garcia-Lorenzo et al. (2018) describe how necessity entrepreneurs deploy critique and seek social change in order to find security and income. Daskalaki and Simosi’s (2018) study of the chronically unemployed in Greece explores what happens when individuals are excluded from mainstream social structures such as regular employment, and instead develop new subjectivities or ‘liminoid identity positions’ alongside ‘alternative forms of work and organization’ (p. 1153). Similarly, Garcia-Lorenzo et al. (2018, p. 280, p. 374) show European nascent necessity entrepreneurs in a ‘liminoid stage’ of permanent outsider-hood where they must constantly reshape ‘their immediate social context’ and develop creative entrepreneuring practices through their efforts to survive and become entrepreneurs, but never complete their transition. Although both studies describe individuals engaged in critique and striving for change, the social barriers they face seem almost insurmountable – a situation less akin to a voluntary liminoid transition than to involuntary exclusion and permanent marginality, or ‘limbo’ (Bamber et al., 2017).
Other research adopting the term liminoid explores individual experiences where there is more choice and less constraint, while the individuals they portray hardly engage in social critique and change. In a study of street traders at the Rio Olympics, Duignan, Down and O’Brien (2020, p. 15) emphasize the liminoid dissolution of structure at the event’s spatial margins which facilitate ‘indeterminate, serendipitous, creative and playful opportunities for residents, traders and visitors alike’. Gaggiotti, Jarvis and Richards (2020, p. 236) characterize the learning of students in a venture-creation master’s programme on the continuum (Spiegel, 2011) between secure liminal, and creative and uncertain liminoid spaces, and argue that students learn to do new things because they have a ‘safety net’ in being able to move between both spaces. Compared to the largely involuntary experiences described by Daskalaki and Simosi (2018) and Garcia-Lorenzo et al. (2018), both Gaggiotti et al. (2020) and Duignan et al. (2020) show that being able to freely move in these spaces relates to the capacity to feel secure and express creativity.
The benefit of such voluntarism and freedom is also seen in Lê and Lander’s (2023) research on the identities of French journalists using a prominent social media platform. As the use of the platform allows journalists to step a small distance into the margins, suspending professional objectivity constraints by infusing ‘news coverage with their own personalities’ which are then ‘manifested as critique’, ‘irony’ and ‘satire’ (Lê & Lander, 2023, p. 15, p. 22), their case also partially fits Turner’s liminoid ideal type in terms of motivation (voluntary, mildly critical) and context (activities outside an established structure). However, their platform use was no more than an aside to the heaviness of their work and, despite its playfulness, the journalists remained constrained by their organizational ties, which set limits to their critique. The potential for social change is not aspired to or realized: conforming to Turner’s (1982) observation that satire is not a liminoid form of critique but a ‘conservative genre’ since its ‘criterion of judgment is usually the normative structural frame of officially promulgated values’ (p. 40).
In summary, we suggest that the liminoid concept has been used in a partial and limited way: as a transition that fails (Garcia-Lorenzo et al., 2018); as a sudden rejection of conventional assumptions about employment (Daskalaki & Simosi, 2018); in explaining marginal spaces (Duignan et al., 2020); safe spaces for student learning (Gaggiotti et al., 2020); and as comfortable identity experimentation (Lê & Lander, 2023). These studies detail particular aspects of what, in Turner’s accounts, is a multi-dimensional concept. It is this broader application of the liminoid concept, one that connects more deeply to ‘the original anthropological ideas of liminality’ (Söderlund & Borg, 2018, p. 881), that our analysis seeks to realize.
Methods
Empirical setting
Our paper is based on an ethnographic study of nine venturers in a UK-based social venture incubator (SVI). The SVI, which defines itself as ‘business support for people creating social change’ (SVI flyer), recruits individuals in annual cohorts, and incubates them for 12 months. The incubator supports venturers with ‘mentorship, guidance from program staff, guest speakers, and interactions with other ventures’ (Hallen et al., 2020, p. 378) in addition to free office space and facilities. It is managed by Unity, a charity providing investment to fund social innovation, in partnership with a local university business school and a development trust. At the time of our study, the SVI was a pioneering UK example of an incubator supporting social venturers. It was provided with a modest amount of funding from the UK government’s Social Incubator Fund (SIF) but was officially regarded as ‘basically experimental. It’s not a huge amount of money that we’ve [got] in the grand scheme of Government spending’ (James, policy adviser, SIF team, Cabinet Office, interview 03.02.2015). Consequently, venturers did not receive a salary, and had to fund the rest of their lives themselves.
The SVI is a good setting for researching liminoid transitions for three reasons. First, it supports individuals who are propelled by an aim to change society, in ways they had been unable to accomplish previously. Second, venturers were between social roles and/or positions: no longer in professional roles, but not yet social entrepreneurs. Third, having detached from their previous organizational roles and taking up more marginal positions, they were freer of constraints that had prevented them from acting, but lacked security and salary.
The temporal structure of the incubator programme is presented in Figure 1. The initial selection process consisted of a written application, followed by participation of 41 applicants in an intensive two-day workshop facilitated by SVI organizers, academics, mentors and successful social venturers, after which nine venturers were selected. Similar to Mair et al. (2012, p. 359), this cohort set out to address a diverse range of social issues (see Table 1). Venturers’ stage of development also varied, ranging from one who had already received investment, to another whose idea was only conceived during the weekend. Venturers’ progress during the year was monitored against a set of KPIs aimed at ensuring their readiness to bring about social impacts, such as developing business and social impact plans, and establishing an advisory board. Venturers were also encouraged to work at the incubator. After the year-long incubation, graduation was marked by a party; this was also the moment for venturers to ‘fly the nest’ (Beth, SVI programme director, 11.06.2015) or stay and start paying for space and services.
Incubator timeline.
Venture Details.
Data sources
The close observation and participation intrinsic to ethnographic study (Watson, 2011) makes it an excellent method for understanding the venturers’ practices. Fieldwork was conducted by the first author between March 2014 and July 2015. Sources of data were observations and informal interviews, formal semi-structured interviews and a range of documentary materials. To maximize the diversity and richness of empirical materials, the researcher approached the field with ‘controlled opportunism’ (Eisenhardt, 1989, p. 539): in May 2014, just before venturer selection, she took a programme administrator job, which involved facilitating fortnightly cohort meetings and provided access to SVI documentation and email traffic. She also taught weekly yoga classes, which helped to further build trust. Resulting from this deep immersion, the researcher gained ‘interactional expertise’ (Langley, Smallman, Tsoukas & Van de Ven, 2013, p. 6), capable of fluent communication in this setting, and knowledge of the work and non-work aspects of venturers’ lives (Watson, 2008). A daily field diary was kept, recording observations, initial reflections and data pre-analysis. In total, 142 typed pages of field notes and 376 files of documentary data were assembled for analysis.
A total of 26 semi-structured interviews ranging from 16 to 60 minutes were conducted (see Table 2) with a UK government official, with SVI staff and with venturers in three rounds spaced across the incubator year. Formal consent was given by all interviewees, interviews were recorded and transcribed, and the dataset was fully anonymized prior to data analysis. Names used in this paper are therefore pseudonyms. First-round interviews focused on venturer ‘pre-histories’ (Sarasvathy, Dew, Velamuri & Venkataraman, 2010), the timing and circumstances that inspired their commitment to social transformation, and their early business ideas. For example, they were asked: ‘Tell me your start-up story: what are the events, the people and experiences that have been important to you?’ Second-round interviews asked open-ended questions about venturers’ business development efforts and progress. The third round of interviews continued these themes and focused on their whole experience of incubation and venture development.
Data Sources.
Data analysis
The duration and quality of access produced data that are ‘longitudinal, rich, and varied’ (Langley et al., 2013, p. 6). NVivo was used to organize the dataset, and coding was done by all authors to bring diverse perspectives to the analysis (Eisenhardt, 1989). Our analysis sought to disclose how venturers were preparing for specific social change objectives and followed a three-step process.
First, all four authors read data, and a chronological analytic memo for each venturer was written, documenting key actions, interactions with mentors and other incubator resources, events and outcomes, and venturers’ reflections and feelings. Second, to analyse the individual chronologies more systematically, we coded the interview transcripts, field notes and other data sources using an abductive approach (van Hulst & Visser, 2024), iterating between theory and data. Our initial attempt to conceptualize venturers’ practices using liminality theory were unsuccessful because it did not shed light on their efforts to bring about world-orientated change. The liminoid concept (Spiegel, 2011; Turner, 1974) enabled a more complete understanding of what venturers were doing.
Abductive coding of individual venturers’ chronologies using the liminoid concept then allowed us to identify the unique patterns within each individual case before seeking to generalize across cases (Eisenhardt, 1989). We noticed that these chronologies were punctuated by distinct shifts of activity: for instance, when an early phase of open-ended exploration later shifted to focused assembling of resources. However, comparison of venturers’ chronologies indicated that these shifts occurred asynchronously. For instance, while Lucy progressed from open-ended exploration to structuring in month six, Flora (who had joined from a previous incubator) was already consolidating her business structure when she joined the SVI. To analyse these individual shifts in activity and compare them across individual cases, in the third step we used a temporal bracketing strategy (Langley, 1999). Temporal brackets are ‘constructed as progressions of events and activities separated by identifiable discontinuities in the temporal flow’ (Langley et al., 2013, p. 7); they enabled us to compare how venturers’ practices emerged and shifted over time, and how practices deployed in one phase reconstructed the context, giving rise to a subsequent need for different practices. These comparisons used a replication logic to identify commonalities across individuals and an extension logic to create a fuller theoretical picture (Eisenhardt, 1991, p. 620). For example, the case of one venturer who reduced his commitment to the incubator to just one day per week allowed us to identify compromising as a practice; cross-case comparison prompted us to realize that all venturers were compromising, but in different ways. From this comparison we identified five higher-order practices for doing incubation that were not specific to individuals, but which were adopted by different venturers at different times and circumstances (see Table 3). We now turn to examining these liminoid practices.
Data Structure.
Findings
Railing against conventional structures and motivated by a desire to realize social change, the incubator venturers we researched engaged in five distinct practices as they attempted to make a transition (see Figure 2). Although, for narrative purposes, we present a temporal sequence, starting with individuals’ detachment from organizational roles and ending with their self-evaluation around the time of their graduation from the incubator, we present the liminoid transition process not as phases with clear beginnings and endings, but as practices without clear temporal boundaries, marked by recursive loops, shifts between practices and variable and uncertain outcomes. In this sense temporal structures of the incubator have variable degrees of ‘stickiness’ in relation to liminoid transition practices. Figure 2 summarizes the practices in motion, capturing how venturers moved their situation to another via a dynamic and recursive process.
Liminoid practices.
Detaching and reorienting
Before joining the SVI, venturers engaged in practices of detachment and reorientation: individuals, driven by critique and social change aspirations but frustrated by their lack of freedom or capacity to do so within their current organizational roles, detaching and reorienting themselves towards starting a business designed to realize their aims. They left income and security and stepped into ‘the margins [of] the interfaces and interstices of central and servicing institutions’ (Turner, 1974, p. 84).
Frustration and critique
Detaching and reorienting began with prospective venturers critiquing some aspect of their work or the world. Something was, as they put it, ‘weird’ or ‘crazy’ or ‘didn’t seem right’ and therefore required an alternative approach: as in Henfridsson and Yoo’s (2014) study they recognized that the situation ‘might be improved by an alternative’ (p. 945). For Shane, the problem was individual car usage: [I] noticed that stuck in traffic jams, on the road, the cars next to me there was only one person in every car. And I thought this is crazy, we're stuck in this traffic and we're all going in the same direction, there should be a way for us to connect better. (Shane, ThumbsUp, 23.10.2014, first round)
However, in their professional roles the prospective venturers felt thwarted by systemic obstacles to change. All venturers expressed frustration with the ‘crazy’ constraints, and ultimately their ‘reflective dissension’ provoked detachment rather than further reflection and experimentation (Beech, 2011; Henfridsson & Yoo, 2014, p. 933). For example, Lucy had worked as a senior NHS therapist and was dismayed that only the most desperate students could access her mental health support service: There were big cutbacks in the NHS. [. . .] In order to get to somebody like me, you would have to pay privately, or [. . .] you’d have to have fallen acutely unwell in order to access an occupational therapist with those skills, and that just didn't seem right. (Lucy, Avalon Performance, 24.09.2014, first round)
Similarly, Flora was frustrated that barriers to sharing genomic medical data impeded progress with medical research: ‘[A]ll of the researchers I knew didn’t have access to enough data, and I thought that was a weird situation: why can’t the researchers share data, what is the problem?’ (Flora, Genome Depot, 10.02.2015, second round)
All venturers felt that conventional structures created barriers to problems being solved. In describing their ‘pre-histories’ (Sarasvathy et al., 2010) – which for some included previous attempts at starting a business or time in other incubators – many also reported that they had tried and failed to surmount these barriers, whether these were economic (e.g. cutbacks), legal (e.g. restrictions on sharing confidential medical data), cultural (e.g. the assumption that managerial job roles must be full-time) or organizational (e.g. presuppositions about the needs of people with disabilities). Sandra for instance, had repeatedly tried to advance her managerial career through part-time work and failed. Her initial frustration – where she felt ‘quite powerless to do much about it’ – was so great that it ultimately developed into a generalized critique of the lack of part-time management roles: she decided she ‘really wanted to make a difference’ and solve this problem (Sandra, JobMatch.com, 23.09.2014, second round).
Revelation, quitting and starting
Having first explored alternatives within existing institutional arrangements venturers began to shift their orientation and seek solutions elsewhere. Venturers reported having had an epiphany about how ‘society’ could be done better. As a result of the stress of prolonged working in ‘crisis environments’, Lucy had taken extended sick leave when it had suddenly dawned on her: I just had the bright idea one day [. . .] and I just thought why don’t I just set up my own practice and work with students, offer what I’m doing to students separately? [. . .] all I could think about doing was having my own private practice. (Lucy, Avalon Performance, 24.09.2014, first round)
Others reported similar experiences of ideas suddenly occurring to them: ‘It was just an idea and I thought maybe technology can solve this? Then I was talking to a bunch of friends in the pub, and we’re all techies and we were all brainstorming about how we could fix this problem with mobile technology’ (Shane, ThumbsUp, 23.10.2014, first round).
The very existence of an idea about how the problem could be fixed instantiated a viable course of action for them. Many venturers could pinpoint when they decided to act on their ‘bright idea’: ‘I’m now going to go and do it. . . . I think it was April when the seed really dropped’ (Samuel, Full-of-Zip, Full-of-Zip, 24.03.2015, second round). Once the decision was made, quitting and starting a new venture could come in quick succession: ‘So I came up with some ideas on how this could be done to enable [genomic data] sharing, and the first thing I did [. . .], was quit my old job [. . .]. And then I started first the charity, DNAsharing.’ (Flora, Genome Depot, 10.02.2015, second round). A year later, Flora registered a limited company just before joining the SVI.
Bettering the world
Venturers’ detachment and reorientation concerned not only their jobs, but also, albeit unintentionally, their identities. Unlike liminars in transition (e.g. Ibarra & Obodaru, 2016), liminoid venturers did not focus on their identity. Detachment and reorientation involved considerable ‘self-questioning’ and ‘internalized dialogue’ (Beech, 2011, p. 289), but the venturers were primarily world-oriented rather than self-oriented. None claimed that becoming an entrepreneur was a motivation: I never thought I would start a business. (Flora, Genome Depot, 10.02.2015, second round)
I didn’t think, ‘I really want to set up a business, what can I do?’ It was just ‘this has got to be done, and I’m going to do it’. [. . .] So, my passion for JobMatch.com is because of my personal circumstances: it’s because I’m a single mum, it’s because I’ve got two wonderful kids that I want to be a good role model for, and create a good future for. And it’s because I want to help other people and provide another avenue for people. (Sandra, JobMatch.com, 23.09.2014, first round)
Focusing on critique and change rather than personal growth, their aspirations always included helping others: ‘I don’t just want to go to work to earn a good salary, I want to go to work to do something that’s meaningful, and that is socially meaningful.’ (Shane, ThumbsUp, 07.07.2015, first round)
Venturers’ pre-histories show a process of detachment and reorientation, born of frustration and critique and the realization of how they might effect change. These characteristics of a liminoid transition also play a role when venturers start actively exploring ideas for a new business.
Exploring
Venturers then worked on how they could make this difference in the world. They engaged in practices of exploration: coming up with new ideas and considering and trying out different options. The aim was to bring about change through a new venture, but little was set. Exploring involved both anti-structural lifting and provisional placing of constraints (Turner, 1974), establishing new certainties while keeping options open, engaging in creative imagination and taking concrete action. During this period, venturers were partly free and exposed, partly guided and protected: exploring was playful, but the process was serious in its consequences and required new knowledge, skills and competencies (Borg & Söderlund, 2015).
Liberation and uncertainty
Once they had joined the incubator and begun their explorations many venturers expressed a sense of freedom and excitement. Venturers described their experiences in striking terms: ‘It happened miraculously’ (Karen, White Swan, 24.09.2014, first round). Being relieved of the ballast of organizational demands, and of externally and internally imposed constraints, was liberating and created space for exploration. As Nate enthused: All the baggage that you get in being part of a larger organization, and working to plans that are other people’s plans, and using methods . . . And so I’m free from all of that, and so I feel that’s really exciting, invigorating and stimulating; and it feeds my soul. (Nate, DEVPEPA, 30.09.2014, first round)
This freedom came with destabilizing elements though, since developing their businesses created identity confusion: After attending the talk in the incubator on Friday [Nate] started wondering who was he as an individual and a business and where is the boundary? Karen and other peers also agreed that they find this distinction difficult. (researcher’s field notes, second cohort meeting, 26.08.2014)
And, for Alex this new freedom was apparent from the very first day when he made an unorthodox visit to a nearby catering college: The catering department director told him he could come in and observe what’s going on in the kitchen. She also offered to connect him with other potential places they work with in the area [. . .] He explained that mentioning that he was part of SVI gave him credibility. (researcher’s field notes, 23.07.2014)
Venturers also brought self-imposed constraints in the form of presuppositions about what running a venture must entail. Mentors were a source of guidance on the lifting of constraints, dismantling of presuppositions, exploring alternatives and trying out previously unknown models. As Beth said, venturers ‘need challenging on their value proposition, and [mentors] need to question, question, question, and so on, in a supportive way’ (Beth, SVI programme director, 11.06.2015). Lucy’s mentor, for example, challenged her to let go of the commercial blind spot she had acquired in the public sector: ‘[My mentor] changed my thinking entirely. [. . .] He asked me one vital question: do you want to sell it or not? And that really helped me think, actually, think “social enterprise”: what type do I want, how much money do I want to make, where are the priorities here?’ (Lucy, Avalon Performance, 24.09.2014, first round). Even a seasoned individual such as Matt, who already ‘had the sort of background that would help him start a business’, having worked in ‘private equity finance’, valued ‘being challenged and inspired’ (researcher’s field notes, 23.07.2014).
Exploring was playful: as Turner (1974, p. 66) described, play involves being ‘free from external constraints, where any and every combination of variables can be “played” with’. This freedom also felt challenging and demanding. Venturers were both excited and uncertain. The action of trying to set up a venture required self-understanding, new knowledge and skills, and they initially felt ill-equipped: I took the leap, and then I was starting to set up. And it’s funny when I think about an image for that time: it was like trying to jump when you can’t bend your knees. I mean, there was no momentum, it was really hard just to start; I was making everything up as I went along, how do I do this? (Lucy, Avalon Performance, 24.09.2014, first round)
While free from constraints, they were now deprived of employment protection and organizational embedding; stepping into the margins left them without experience, knowledge and skills.
Affirmation and pivoting
Developing an exploring practice was a safe but ‘sensorily intense’ experience of ‘spaces-apart and times-apart [. . .] within and during which alternatives to the norm are possible and encouraged’ (Spiegel, 2011, p. 16, p. 13). Admission to the incubator provided venturers with affirmation and institutional protection. The selection process was competitive, and admission implied validation of their social impact objectives. Indeed, Alex dared to ask questions of strangers because of the confidence, credibility and degree of ‘sacred power’ (Turner, 1974, p. 60) afforded by the incubator. Similarly, Sandra felt compensated for being ‘exposed’: I’ve always been used to working for brands, established companies in the past and you don’t know how much working for something that’s already established affects your own behaviour [. . .] And so being part of an incubator that’s supported by bigger companies brings back some of that familiarity, and makes you feel like you’re in a slightly more familiar, comfortable situation, even though you’re completely exposed. (Sandra, JobMatch.com, 14.07.2015, third round)
As a relatively ‘familiar, comfortable’ space, the SVI protected venturers and expanded their scope for playfulness (see also Lê & Lander, 2023), but it also set limits. When Alex abandoned his agreed plans and came up with a series of new ideas, one of which involved supporting another venturer in a different incubator, his ‘disloyalty’ precipitated his discontinuation.
In a joint exploration of alternatives in their attempts to bring about change, venturers and their mentors and peers ‘flipped’ and ‘pivoted’. Sandra, for instance, though still committed to ‘helping people get into employment that can’t fit into the 40-hour week’, shifted her strategy based on feedback she received from potential service users at workshops she ran. Based on this she ‘pivoted’ towards providing a service for larger organizations, using contacts mentors had provided (Sandra, JobMatch.com, 23.09.2014, second round). Samuel described consultants running a workshop at the SVI as ‘the pivotal game-changers: they caused the penny to drop. [They presented] just a single traffic light formula, it’s so easy and I just thought: wow!’ (Samuel, Full-of-Zip, 24.03.2015, second round). In workshops too, venturers explored new ideas and business models from ‘business school tools’ that trainers set as exercises: it was at ‘that [training] session Karen realized another potential income stream by applying the value chain tool’ (researcher’s field notes, 17.07.2014).
Exploration ended once venturers determined how they would structure and resource the business. Previously unable to act on their critique and pursue change, their objectives now had a ‘legitimate narrative’ (Ibarra & Obodaru, 2016, p. 47). The incubator compensated venturers’ detachment from conventional structures by providing generic and institutionalized narratives and resources that helped turn a part-formed idea into a business. It provided an ‘institutional capsule or pocket’ (Turner, 1974, p. 76) that allowed a sense of familiarity and comfort (Lê & Lander, 2023) and a ‘safety net’ (Gaggiotti et al., 2020) in which venturers felt cushioned enough to engage in world-oriented explorations without being forced to focus on the kinds of self-survival seen in Daskalaki and Simosi (2018) and Garcia-Lorenzo et al. (2018). Venturers now faced a new challenge: implementing their plans.
Structuring
Venturers now practised structuring: fixing upon and materializing a business model, bringing in support and supplies, and using financial and material resources instrumentally to build the concrete form of the venture. To gain traction, the venturer needed conventional ways of convincing investors, customers and colleagues of their business’s viability, such as business plans and marketing strategies. As Turner (1974, p. 61) remarks, the introduction of structure ‘limit[s] the possible combination of factors to certain conventional patterns, designs, or figurations’. Options start to narrow, and implementing internal structures (e.g. staffing, budgeting and marketing) and building external relationships (e.g. customers, suppliers and investors) created a solid foundation that might realize social change. In a liminoid transition, there is no ‘pre-determined progressive outcome’ (Ibarra & Obodaru, 2016, p. 53) such as a readymade exit role to escalate into. Rather, work is needed to practise structuring.
Providing underpinnings
Having identified a business model, venturers needed to pilot their product or service through a structured proof-of-concept process. For Flora, this meant beta-launching her genomic data sharing platform with potential users, and for Matt, the trialling of the ‘minimal viable product’ for the hearing aid he was developing: Now we are ready to do live trials. So Beth said, ‘I know somebody’ and I made the effort and I rang them up, and all of a sudden I could do clinical trials on the Isle of Man which took me three months and £70 k as opposed to here in the UK it would take me nine months, twelve months, and maybe cost me £600 k. (Matt, HawkComms, 16.07.2015, third round)
Mentors were a key support during the piloting process and establishing other subsequent structures. The SVI organizers encouraged venturers to shift from exploring to structuring: Unless they do all these things, all the sensible stuff, the underpinnings of a successful business, then they may have a kind of cool project over here or a funky thing over there, but they won’t grow a proper business. And that’s what we want, we want them to go on out of here creating impact, obviously, and creating real jobs and making a real difference. (Beth, programme director, 11.06.2015, interview)
Reflecting this understanding of structuring as doing the ‘sensible stuff’, Flora said: So we have to put processes in place internally. That might sound very boring, but it’s about making a structure to how we develop. And so there’s like a lot of methodology around it, and that’s what we’re currently, I wouldn’t say struggling with, I would just say: that’s what we’re doing. (Flora, Genome Depot, 10.02.2015, second round)
Bootstrapping
Setting up a business was done outside conventional structures, with guidance from the SVI, but no financial support. Most ventures were generating little or no income yet, and so had to do their structuring work with scarce resources. As Lucy (Avalon Performance, 24.09.2014, first round) declared: ‘I’ve done this on a real shoestring.’ Several described this practice in terms of ‘bootstrapping’; borrowing money and ‘recycling’ former colleagues who initially worked for free, as Flora described, I was joined by Andrew. [. . .] I said: ‘I can’t pay you, because we don’t have any money, and you can join to help me get the money.’ [. . .] He worked with me to refine the business plan, and we pitched for investment. [. . .] We got 15 investors [who] came back to us and said they were interested in investing, and the amount they wanted to invest in total was more than what we were asking for. (Flora, Genome Depot, 10.02.2015, second round)
Flora’s bootstrapping efforts were successful: at the end of the incubator year, Andrew became the chief technical officer and Genome Depot had nine employees.
Structuring was the unheroic practice needed to provide underpinnings for a successful business that might ‘make a real difference’. With limited funding, the venturers put internal and external processes in place by assembling resources ‘on a shoestring’. Structuring was not a linear process, however, and venturers needed to practise compromise, responding to the outside-in (Beech, 2011, p. 289) intrusion of the other parts of their lives.
Compromising
A liminoid transition is unpredictable and ‘fragmentary’ (Turner, 1974, p. 85) and the outcome uncertain. Lacking an income, their roles as providers at home came into tension with their roles as venturers, meaning they often had to make compromises. They remained lodged in their lives outside their venturing work: paying the mortgage, being a partner and parent. Although the incubator provided support and protection, there was no salary: joining was a significant financial and life-structural risk, with no guaranteed outcome. Venturers needed to make compromises between conflicting demands, while ‘banking’ progress and reaffirming their commitment to pursuing social change. Hence, we define compromising practices as the temporary scaling back or pausing of venture development in response to other role pressures.
Pacing
All venturers paced their progress by dividing their time between venture development and working to pay the bills. Most took part-time jobs, but Shane worked full-time and ran a master’s degree alongside developing ThumbsUp, ‘So I’m being pulled in like three directions at the moment. [. . .] We can’t apply ourselves 100 per cent because of that’ (Shane, ThumbsUp, 29.01.2015, second round). Similarly, eight months into the programme Nate scaled back working on his venture and took a well-paid charitable sector job. This was not stopping, but it’s all been tempered by the reality of putting bread on the table. [. . .] So, I haven’t totally stopped DEVPEPA, I do it one day a week and [. . .] I’d like to think that I can keep it ticking over until such time as I retire, [. . .], and I’ve got a pension. (Nate, DEVPEPA, 27.07.2015, third round)
But for Flora, securing investment meant she could cease pacing and focus on her venture full time: There was a bit of relief when we got investment because that meant less pressure on me to work every free hour on my part-time job. So when you know you have enough salary to pay the rent then you can say, ‘Phew’, then you don’t have to spend the whole weekend working in order to pay the rent; and then Monday morning you continue working because that’s your other job. (Flora, Genome Depot, 21.07.2015, third round)
Pausing
Alex, on the other hand, temporarily ceased work on his venture to support his young family: My major preoccupation at the moment is that I’m spending time on WasteSnap but really, I should be spending time earning money. [. . .] So, I’m literally thinking today, okay, maybe I need to just stop doing this for a few weeks and just build up that money again, and then come back to it. That’s tough, that’s hard! (Alex, WasteSnap, 18.09.2014, first round)
The course and outcome of a liminoid transition are fragmented and uncertain, sometimes forcing venturers to make compromises and temporarily postpone or curtail venture development. If their venture did not take off, the venturers were left in-between their ‘old’ working life and a new future.
Self-evaluating
Unlike a liminal transition which ends with the attainment (or ‘“re-aggregation” or “incorporation”’, Turner, 1974, p. 57) of a new role or status, a liminoid process does not necessarily have a clearly demarcated and positively laden ending, or indeed any end at all. The successful venturers who had established their ventures and were beginning to achieve social change continued their efforts to scale the social impact of their ventures. Of those who were unsuccessful, some signed up to another incubator initiative, while others continued their work in other ways. Wherever the venturers were in the ‘sticky’ temporality of incubator time and their pursuit of social change, however, they often considered (or constructed) certain moments in their transition process as a symbolic end. In particular, the end of the incubator year, marked by a private graduation party and a more public celebration also attended by investors and representatives of the Cabinet Office funders, prompted venturers to explicitly assess their transition experience and progress, thus engaging in a practice of self-evaluation. In interviews after the party, venturers reflected on what graduation meant to them and tentatively identified their progress or reluctantly acknowledged their lack of it: overall, the assessment of their progress was self-critical, yet generous and self-forgiving.
Self-affirming talk
Commensurate with liminoid transitions, there were a variety of outcomes (see Table 1), which ranged from ‘com[ing] out of [the incubator] with some useful advice, introductions and ideas’ to it being ‘life changing’ (Marcus, chief business adviser, 07.07.2015, interview). The incubator was a turning point for those whose ventures had gained external recognition and financial viability. Two venturers claimed success unequivocally. Flora had secured significant investment, employed nine people, and accessed loans. Lucy listed her achievements, [I] have marketing and branding all set up, and a website that looks great, and [. . .] I’ll be measuring impact next year, and I’ve got an advisory board, and I’ve got more occupational therapists coming on. I mean, my God! That’s amazing! [. . .] I feel ready to graduate. [. . .] I have a company. [. . .] It’s now a registered company limited by shares, and it’s not just me as a sole trader. So, yes, I do feel like an entrepreneur, and I have the confidence now that I can run a business. (Lucy, Avalon Performance, 13.07.2015, third round)
Not all venturers could claim complete success but were generous in their self-evaluating practice. Two venturers had joined the SVI from a previous incubator, and upon the close of the programme three progressed on to a further incubator, embarking on another cycle of working towards social change. Acceptance held promise for the future, such that Samuel could claim: We’ve got on the [new programme] and that’s huge for us. [. . .] [It shows that] you’re a serious social enterprise; there’s something about you that others have seen, so you’re worth paying attention to. (Samuel, Full-of-Zip, 29.07.2015, third round)
Self-questioning talk
Graduation celebrated success and silenced failure. At the private graduation party, in a round-table discussion in a separate room, [. . .] venturers reflected informally on their progress. There was a strange atmosphere, with a clear division between some graduates who spoke of the great strides of their ventures and others who remained noticeably and awkwardly silent. (researcher field notes, 08.07.2015)
However, while the practice of self-evaluation was geared towards building a self-affirming and progressive narrative (Ybema, Kamsteeg & Veldhuizen, 2019) around personal achievements, external affirmation and future goals and gains, not all venturers could congratulate themselves. During interviews, some venturers shared their self-doubt and self-critique. Sandra, for example, expressed ambivalence together with pride: I guess there’s a part of me that feels like I haven’t met expectations. [. . .] Do I feel a fraud? Because, actually, I’m not revenue-generating, the business isn’t ticking over, it’s not supporting itself. It’s still very much ‘baby’, albeit it’s been validated massively this year, it’s still very much in its infancy. [. . .] I feel proud of what I’ve done and the fact that I’ve got some seriously experienced people in social entrepreneurship believing in JobMatch.com. (Sandra, JobMatch.com, 14.07.2015, third round)
Similarly, Nate recovered a sense of personal success despite having . . . failed on the basis of the criteria that the programme had set [. . .]. But in terms of my own personal journey, I don’t feel a failure at all, and I felt that from a personal point of view it was a great success. (Nate, DEVPEPA, 27.07.2015, third round)
By emphasizing perseverance and the positive in their self-evaluation practice, the venturers immunized themselves against a sense of failure, enabling them to continue their efforts for social change. Shane had always resisted advice that he should have an exit strategy if the business did not succeed within a particular timeframe. Rather, ‘my strategy is to keep on going until it works’ (Shane, ThumbsUp, 23.10.2014, first round). Consistent with Garcia-Lorenzo et al.’s (2018) observation, individuals who encounter ‘liminoid conditions’ must persevere in their efforts. Rather than going through a one-off cycle, ‘their entrepreneurship journey tends to be repeated again and again, as they go through different cycles to rebuild self, projects and social relationships’ (Garcia-Lorenzo et al., 2018, p. 381).
Discussion
The notion of liminality traditionally focuses on pre-planned changes of individuals within conventional structures, and previous research has analysed the transition of individuals to new positions as a liminal process (Söderlund & Borg, 2018). This paper focuses instead on how individuals try to change the structure itself. Following Turner’s original understanding, we conceptualized this as a liminoid transition process in which individuals critique and step out of their old world, generate new ideas, and experiment and innovate to initiate change. We asked the question: what practices do individuals engaged in a liminoid transition adopt? Analysis of our ethnographic data shows that individuals deploy five practices: detaching and reorienting, exploring, structuring, compromising, and self-evaluating. Our empirical account of individuals’ practices thus provides deeper insight into the specific social dynamics that unfold in a liminoid transition. We now discuss further implications of this analysis and contribute to the field of organization studies by providing analytical precision and conceptual grounding for theorizing liminoid transition processes and practices, first by detailing their characteristics as distinct from liminal transitions, and second by discussing how different degrees of detachment from conventional organizational structures may affect the possibilities for social change and the personal lives of transitioning individuals.
Specifying the distinction between liminal and liminoid
In response to calls for conceptual precision in studies of liminality (Ibarra & Obodaru, 2016; Söderlund & Borg, 2018) and building on previous research (e.g. Spiegel, 2011; Turner, 1974) our analysis adds further clarity to the distinction between the twin concepts, liminal and liminoid. A liminoid transition is liminal-like (Turner, 1974), since it also involves a process in which normal expectations and regular activities are suspended, alternative modes of behaviour and norms are envisioned and enacted, and individuals thus go through in-between, anti-structural moments apart from conventional structures. However, liminoid transitions are also markedly different. Our analysis suggests they are distinct in three key aspects: (1) underlying motivation; (2) institutional context; and (3) social and material conditions. First, in line with the original breadth of Turner’s (1974) conceptualization, liminoid transitions are inflamed and inspired by ‘injustices, inefficiencies, and immoralities’ (p. 86). Rather than an obligation or aspiration to obtain a new social position for themselves, venturers chose transition voluntarily and out of conviction, motivated by moral indignation and social critique, and the need to upend conventional practices and initiate social change.
Second, discontent with current institutional arrangements motivates individuals to step into the margins to effect social change. Whereas a liminal process involves transition from one stable position to another within an institutionalized context that facilitates the transition, a liminoid transition occurs outside of such arrangements, occurring at the margins and interstices of social life (Turner, 1974). In our study, venturers chose to leave previous roles and break new ground by building a new social venture. Liminoid individuals operate in less conventional settings, such as emergent forms of organization and isolated pockets for critique that aim to transform the prevailing structures: ‘the liminal provides opportunity for rebellion followed by a return to the status quo ante, while the liminoid has the potential to produce revolutionary change’ (Spiegel, 2011, p. 13).
Finally, as in under-institutionalized contexts (Ibarra & Obodaru, 2016), the choice to step out of conventional structures and to take idiosyncratic routes to explore critical and creative ideas for changing society brings along more difficult social and material conditions for the transitioning individual. In a liminoid transition, there is no ‘pre-determined progressive outcome’ (Ibarra & Obodaru, 2016, p. 53), a readymade exit role to escalate into. Working from the outside brings with it the lack of a secure income, a preconceived plan and a certain outcome in terms of identity and aspirations for social change. Although there are varying degrees of detachment and uncertainty (discussed below), liminoid transitions are unpredictable and open-ended, with few procedures, protections or guarantees. Our study shows that venturers’ freedom comes at the price of support and security.
Enhancing analytical precision: liminoid transition practices and identity
The three distinctive aspects of liminoid transitions have implications for individuals’ transition practices and identity. First: how and why are liminal and liminoid transition practices different? At first glance, they hardly are. Venturers’ practices are similar to those in Beech (2011): experimentation, recognition and reflection. Although we use slightly different terms (exploring, reorienting and self-evaluating), venturers also tried out different forms of temporary attachment (experimenting), came to realize the need for change (recognizing), and questioned themselves (reflecting) (Beech, 2011, pp. 289–290). However, the distinct motivation, context and conditions of liminoid transitions also result in significantly different practices.
In contrast to the liminal practices described by Beech, liminoid practices are more focused on the world than on the self. While the liminoid individual’s transition does have implications for their identities (see below), their experimentation, recognition and reflection are aimed at effecting social rather than identity change. Second, instead of moving to a different institutional position, their critical engagement motivates them to quit and start anew, which necessitates adopting practices that are less central to liminal transitions. Somewhat similar to liminars who engage in critiquing and destabilizing the old and seeking and embedding the new in an attempt to bring about organizational change from within (Gross & Geiger, 2017; Henfridsson & Yoo, 2014), liminoid individuals critically detach themselves from an institutional world that does not align with their social ideals and reorient themselves towards alternatives. And, being outside conventional structures, they then engage in specific practices such as exploring new opportunities, structuring initiatives and compromising aspirations. We did not find the practices of destabilization and resistance described by Gross and Geiger (2017), probably because they describe a situation in which change is forced upon the individuals by external circumstances (outside-in change), whereas we describe individuals who choose to invert and subvert established structures themselves (an inside-out transition). Third, after having cut old ties without having established new ones yet, liminoid individuals work under uncertain conditions with little institutional backing, while the consequences of the transition process were serious. The lack of guaranteed income or preconceived plans turned the transition into an intense process: ‘detaching’ was liberating but challenging, ‘exploring’ playful but pressured, ‘structuring’ boring but critical, and ‘compromising’ annoying but unavoidable.
This analysis also has implications for theorizing liminoid and liminal identities. Consonant with individuals undergoing a liminal transition, a liminoid transition involves temporal talk juxtaposing past, present and future (Ybema et al., 2011). Going through an open-ended process with uncertain outcomes similar to liminars in under-institutionalized contexts (Ibarra & Obodaru, 2016), they may experience a prolonged, cycle-after-cycle sense of in-betweenness. Indeed, venturers constantly compromised their change aspirations with the demands of everyday life, while also presenting an optimistic and progressive growth narrative. However, rather than a self-directed narrative of personal growth typically told by liminars (e.g. Beech, 2011), venturers engaged in world-oriented narratives, constructing a dark past/bright future binary around conventional structures that were ‘lacking’, ‘stifling’ and ‘in need of change’. Despite its world-orientedness, their identity narrative was implicitly self-affirming, casting themselves as Davids against the Goliaths of conservative structures blocking change. In uncertain conditions, where ‘victory’ depended on luck, cunning and commitment, venturers told optimistic tales of their ‘struggle’. However, they also engaged in self-questioning evaluations, asking themselves: do I have what it takes to build a new venture and claim a new identity? Future research may ask what type of identity talk is typical of other liminal or liminoid individuals and whether they also engage in overtly self-affirming and more covertly self-questioning talk (Ybema et al., 2019).
The impact of different forms and degrees of detachment
Not all forms of liminal and liminoid transitions are the same. While separation and distancing are necessary steps in initiating any transition, comparison of our study with previous research suggests that there are degrees of distancing associated with different outcomes in terms of the type of change sought and achieved (see Table 4). First, in studies of liminal transitions where individuals create moderate distance by stepping away from established practices to try new ones, their change efforts function to transition themselves to a new role or position (Beech, 2011) or to make existing organizational systems perform better (Gross & Geiger, 2017; Henfridsson & Yoo, 2014) and their movement to the margins is temporary and relatively modest.
Liminal and Liminoid Transitions: Motivation, Context, Conditions and Practices.
Second, Lê and Lander’s (2023) account of ‘organizational distancing’ describes a liminoid experience of journalists that involved partial separation from the organizations they worked for to ‘reaffirm their autonomy and independence’ (p. 18). Remaining comfortably in-between ‘loyal member’ and ‘independent’, they were partly freed from organizational constraints and continued to benefit from their organization’s legitimacy, and salary. However, their employer still defined the limits of expression, restricting the space for serious critique.
Third, in our study, most venturers fully distanced themselves by severing all employer ties. Being outside an established organization afforded them the freedom to criticize, seek to disrupt practices and provide alternatives. At the same time, venturers took side-jobs to maintain security and sought the support of an incubator as a substitute provider of credibility and legitimacy with key external stakeholders. Their detachment and insecurity led them to maintain or create connections in order to realize their change agenda.
Fourth, an often unbridgeable and brutal distance from employment structures or high positions in the status hierarchy seems to constitute a category of its own. Instead of using the terms liminal or liminoid, we suggest following Bamber et al. (2017) in referring to such prolonged separation as a situation that places individuals in a ‘limbo’ of exclusion, stigma and marginality. Studies of ‘liminoid’ necessity entrepreneurs by Daskalaki and Simosi (2018) and Garcia-Lorenzo et al. (2018), a ‘liminal’, rather unsuccessful venturer by Muhr et al. (2019), and low status professionals in ‘limbo’ by Bamber et al. (2017) all illustrate how brutal distance can be forced upon individuals: rather than a temporary step into marginal positions before seeking to rejoin the mainstream, they risk being marooned. For them, the socially transformative effort is directed towards employment or emancipation, and the search for dignified treatment or decent work. While a liminoid transition’s radical break with ‘the old’ may allow for building ‘the new’, the structural disadvantage and inability to reconnect or realize social change creates a prolonged or permanent disconnection. It is a fundamentally different context in that ‘[o]ptation pervades the liminoid phenomenon, obligation the liminal’ (Turner, 1974, p. 74; Turner, 1982) and exclusion the limbo. In this tripartite, the liminoid thus emerges in the middle, between institutional obligation (liminality) and exclusion (limbo), where individuals enjoy considerable freedom to critique and disrupt, and, despite institutional detachment and precarious conditions, enough security to focus on seeking to make a change in the world.
The degree of distance also matters in terms of the conditions it creates that put pressure on the transition process and a person’s life. The more radical the rupture of a liminoid transition, the more profound the impact on multiple roles and life spheres. Whereas liminality studies tend to describe how one of an individual’s roles transitions while others continue, research on liminoid transitions suggests that they affect different roles independently, entailing disengagement ‘from one or possibly multiple roles (such as jobholder, work group member, organizational member) without having a new role to identify with’ (Daskalaki & Simosi, 2018, p. 1157). Our research shows that non-work roles also have an ongoing impact on, for instance, the motivation to begin or postpone the transition. Liminoid transitions involve making constant compromises and juggling different ambitions and commitments. Our study suggests that, in the case of radical detachment, anti-structure, defined by Turner (1974, p. 75) as liberation from the constraints associated with ‘a multiplicity of social roles’, is as much frustration and uncertainty as it is revelation or liberation.
Uncertain outcomes also create difficult conditions for liminoids. Although not as harsh and hopeless as the prospects for marginalized individuals in permanent limbo, constantly struggling and falling short, operating outside institutions creates conditions for liminoids that are less certain than those for liminars in under-institutionalized settings. Our analysis shows variability in the outcomes for venturers. Some successfully achieved social change and a new identity as an entrepreneur. Others persevered in their efforts, responding to potentially paralysing pessimism about their chances to create change or become entrepreneurs with a focus on the positives. Even those who objectively fell short still emphasized achievements and the creativity of their activities. In general, the more detached, the higher the stakes and the more unpredictable the outcome of a desired transition.
Limitations and directions for future research
This study’s findings are analytically transferable to other settings where individuals are motivated by a critique of, and desire to change, current structures; where they detach from their institutional context to be able to reinvent practices; and where this detachment involves actual, or potential, loss of material and social support and security. We believe that the liminoid concept could thus be a sign of the many contemporary crises that are currently motivating people to take social action. Indeed, Turner’s (1974) description of the time when he was writing as one likely to inflame people’s sense of injustice and immorality could equally apply to our own, in which people may embark on liminoid transitions from a range of standpoints. If we live in liminoid times, further empirical and theoretical explorations of liminoid phenomena are clearly in order.
As we aim to articulate how, in our case, liminoid (and liminal) transitions emerge and evolve, ours is an ‘enacting’ type of theory (Sandberg & Alvesson, 2021, p. 503) for which boundary conditions are relatively open ended, because ‘the phenomena to which [the theory] refers are not fixed but evolve and change over time’. This is why we started theorizing when, how and why liminal and liminoid transitions may be differently accomplished in different settings. However, our study is limited empirically to a single context and theoretically to the few studies of liminoid transitions. Future research could investigate a wider range of specific contexts where individuals are involved in social critique and social action outside conventional organizational structures and engaged in alternative forms of organizing. We also need to recognize that some radical social change is conceived and implemented from within more or less conventional organizations. As well as ‘obvious’ candidates such as activist organizations and social enterprises, future settings could include political, media and research organizations. Here, we could ask, for instance, what happens when and how managers do or do not support liminoid initiatives, leaving the initiators in more or less precarious conditions. Future research could also address the temporal limitations of our study, which focused on the transition period from detachment until graduation. Though our analysis of practices has benefitted from ethnographic immersion, the small sample, and the cut-off, just at the point when some individuals and their new ventures were beginning to make social impacts, meant that sustained observation and analysis of social change was not possible. Designs which tracked individuals over longer periods such as online diary methods (Borg & Söderlund, 2015) might facilitate further understanding of what and how social impacts are realized.
Future research might also further develop the liminoid concept. We believe that Turner’s (1974, 1977a, 1977b) writings still provide a rich repository of ideas that are useful in thinking about contemporary liminal and liminoid organizational experiences and situations. For instance, Turner’s (1977b) characterization of the liminoid as the ‘dismembering’ of the liminal might prove more than a metaphorical allusion. He states that the ‘various things that hang together in the liminal situations split off to pursue separate destinies’ in ‘liminoid genres’ (p. 43). This accords with the way that the different aspects of liminoid or contemporary liminal experiences seem amenable to disaggregation. In our analysis of liminoid transitions we see the individual split into various social roles; the disruption of transitional cycles even within a year-long incubator programme; and we see how being released from constraints is experienced as other structural constraints intrude on the freedoms of anti-structure. Indeed, the degree to which elements of the liminoid experience – action and identity; identity and roles; individualized trajectories and outcomes; limited durations and permanence – can be mixed and matched are yet unexplored avenues for further research.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
