Linköping Studies in Arts and Science No. 614
Liminality at Work
Mobile Project Workers In-Between
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Elisabeth Borg
Linköping Studies in Arts and Science No. 614 Department of Management and Engineering
Linköping University se-58183 Linköping, Sweden www.liu.se
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Project-based work constitutes an increasing part of contemporary working life. Such work entails some specific requirements for workers, who increasingly must deal with uncertainty and ambigui-ty, create swift trust with new team members, recurrently enter new project, and leave old projects behind. This PhD thesis adopts and develops the conceptual lens of liminality to shed new light on these conditions and requirements of modern working life. The overall idea is to capture two typical characteristics of flexible and pro-ject-based work: mobility and structural ambiguity. Based on three qualitative studies, the thesis develops: (1) a framework for under-standing different dimensions of liminality at work, (2) a conceptu-alization of the practices people use to deal with challenges related to liminality, and (3) a framework of what constitutes liminality com-petence and how such comcom-petence can be developed. The empirical focus is mobile project workers and more specifically technical con-sultants performing their work in client projects.
