The Training Setting as a Social and Liminal Space for Professional Hybridization

Area of Science:

• Organizational Psychology
• Sociology
• Adult Education

Background:

• Contemporary organizations face uncertainty, volatility, and ambiguity, necessitating rapid professional hybridization.
• Training settings can serve as liminal spaces, facilitating personal and organizational identity development.
• Rehabilitation centers undergoing reconfiguration require new roles and cultural transformation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore the concept of liminality within a training context.
• To highlight the potential of liminal spaces to trigger evolutionary personal and organizational identity trajectories.
• To identify pathways for professional hybridization within a training group.

Main Methods:

• Action research process within an extra-hospital Rehabilitation Center.
• Case study focusing on cultural transformation and organizational learning.
• Analysis of features characterizing training as a liminal space.

Main Results:

• Training settings, when designed as liminal spaces, can effectively promote professional hybridization.
• Liminality in training supports the development of new roles, such as the coordinator.
• The study identified potential paths for professional hybridization triggered by group dynamics in liminal settings.

Conclusions:

• Liminality is a valuable concept for understanding transformative learning in organizational contexts.
• Training environments can be strategically utilized as liminal spaces to foster adaptive professional identities.
• The findings offer insights for managing organizational change and nurturing learning through structured liminal experiences.