Liminality in Management and Organization Studies: Process,Position and Place

This paper explores liminality, a concept receiving increased attention in management and organization studies and gaining prominence because of its capacity to capture the interstitial and temporary elements of organizing and work. The authors present a systematic review of the literature on liminality, covering 61 published papers, and undertake a critical analysis of how the concept of liminality has been used in prior research. This review reveals associations with three main themes: process; position; and place. For each theme, the authors identify the central research questions posed, while comparing individual and collective levels of analysis. During this process, the authors revisit several ideas central to the original, anthropological research on liminality, a perspective from which they suggest a rejuvenation of liminality research in management and organization studies. This paper argues for a greater focus on the liminal experience itself – especially its ritual and temporal dimensions – and for improving the comparative analysis of liminality following the three themes identified in this paper. The authors suggest that revising the agenda for liminality research along these lines could facilitate more informed responses to the challenges of an increasingly temporary and dynamic work life.     

Managing Migration: The Role of Economic Instruments

This paper reviews economic policies and instruments available to the developed countries to reduce unwanted migration from developing countries, not all of which is irregular migration. Countries generally welcome legal immigrants and visitors, try to make it unnecessary for people to become refugees and asylum seekers, and try to discourage, detect, and remove irregular foreigners. There are three major themes: 1. There are as many reasons for migration as there are migrants, and the distinction between migrants motivated by economic and non–economic considerations is often blurred. Perhaps the best analogy is to a river – what begins as one channel that can be managed with a dam can become a series of rivulets forming a delta, making migration far more difficult to manage. 2. The keys to reducing unwanted migration lie mostly in emigration countries, but trade and investment fostered by immigration countries can accelerate economic and job growth in both emigration and immigration countries, and make trading in goods a substitute for economically motivated migration. Trade and economic integration had the effect of slowing emigration from Europe to the Americas, between southern Europe and northern Europe, and in Asian Tiger countries such as South Korea and Malaysia. However, the process of moving toward freer trade and economic integration can also increase migration in the short term, producing a migration hump, and requiring cooperation between emigration and immigration destinations so that the threat of more migration does not slow economic integration and growth. 3. Aid, intervention, and remittances can help reduce unwanted migration, but experience shows that there are no assurances that such aid, intervention, and remittances would, in fact, lead migrants to stay at home. The better use of remittances to promote development, which at US$65 billion in 1999 exceeded the US$56 billion in official development assistance (ODA), is a promising area for cooperation between migrants and their areas of origin, as well as emigration and immigration countries. There are two ways that differences between countries can be narrowed: migration alone in a world without free trade, or migration and trade in an open economy. Migration will eventually diminish in both cases, but there is an important difference between reducing migration pressures in a closed or open world economy. In a closed economy, economic differences can narrow as wages fall in the immigration country, a sure recipe for an anti–immigrant backlash. By contrast, in an open economy, economic differences can be narrowed as wages rise faster in the emigration country. Areas for additional research and exploration of policy options include: (1) how to phase in freer trade, investment, and economic integration to minimize unwanted migration; (2) strategies to increase the job–creating impacts of remittances, perhaps by using aid to match remittances that are invested in job–creating ways.     

Promoting Justice in the Delivery of Services to Juvenile Delinquents: The Ecosystemic Natural Wrap-Around Model

Caught between their child and doing the right thing, families of chronic juvenile delinquents often experience a series of injustices in the name of justice. Attempts by the system to correct the delinquency problem often result in the imposition of values and beliefs that negate the family's values, experiences and meanings of their child's behavior. The Ecosystemic Natural Wrap-around (E.N.W.) model attempts to respectfully account for the many influences that maintain problematic interactions, both internal and external, in the nuclear family of chronic juvenile delinquents. The model focuses on a variety of interventions at different levels and contexts, building on the strengths of the family, using the extended family and fictive kin networks, and clarifying the meanings associated with problematic behavior for the multiple players. The model proposed is an integrative theoretical approach, emphasizing systems theory and constructivism.     

The pill and partnerships: the impact of the birth control pill on cohabitation

This paper investigates the impact on cohabitation behavior of the introduction and dispersion of the birth control pill in the USA during the 1960s and early 1970s. A theoretical model generates several predictions that are tested using the first wave of the National Survey of Families and Households. Empirically, the causal effect is identified by exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in state laws granting access to the pill to unmarried women under age 21. The evidence shows that the pill was a catalyst that increased cohabitation??s role in selecting marriage partners, but did little in the short run to promote cohabitation as a substitute for marriage.     

Ex Ante Project Evaluation and the Complexity of Early Decision-Making

This paper looks beyond more traditional evaluation activities to focus primarily on evaluation up front. It suggests that the early appraisal of an investment case or a project should apply essentially the same evaluation criteria that will be used in ex post evaluation, and thus increase the likelihood of a successful project outcome. However, the initial plan might be altered as result of subsequent analysis, assessment, negotiation, positioning, and the exercise of power. The last part of this paper presents an empirical study of 23 projects, which examines the complexity of processes that occur in the idea- and decision phases.     

Inequality in Interaction: Equalising the Helper–Recipient Relationship in the Refugee Solidarity Movement

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - In this paper, we supplement existing scholarship on the interactional process within volunteering with one that focuses...     

Reply to the Commentaries: Of Course,We Do Not Yet Know What it is All About,But Functional Contextualism is a Good Place to Start

In this reply to the commentaries, we note several points of disagreement with Johnson and Greenman on theoretical and empirical grounds. We are particularly surprised by their assumption that attachment has already been established as the key mechanism of change in couple therapy, as our present findings do not support this idea. We also elaborate on Gurman's functional contextualist views and describe why IBCT may be a particularly helpful model for training new couple therapists in a contextualist way.