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

Abstract

This article addresses the liminality concept as a way to explore a particular group context, relating to a training setting intended as a liminal space, and to highlight its potential to trigger evolutionary personal and organizational identity trajectories. Dealing with a contemporary uncertain, volatile, and ambiguous organizational scenario, people are asked for consistent and quick professional hybridization processes. This article refers to a case study related to an action research process aimed at a cultural transformation and nurturing organizational learning inside an extra-hospital Rehabilitation Center, challenged by a strong organizational reconfiguration and the creation of new functions and roles, among which the one coordinator, responsible for the operational activity to be managed within the units of the organizational context. This article also highlights both the main features that characterize a training setting as a liminal space and identifies the possible plots of professional hybridization paths that a training group as a liminal space can trigger and develop.

Renewing the object of work as a trigger for inter-organizational learning

“…This perspective entails the improvement of a hybrid professionality culture and adhocratic models of organizing (Mintzberg, 2009, 2012; Scaratti et al , 2021; Ivaldi and Scaratti, 2019), developed as knotworking activity (Scaratti et al , 2017) in which organizational processes (made by rules, subjects, division of labor, internal and external dynamics) unfold without a stable center, but through an extension of differentiated and sustainable contributions. At stake is the possibility of enhancing “mycorrhizae activities” (Engeström, 2006), spreading their potential to create e wildfire expansion effect (Engeström, 2008) by promoting pilot experiences supported by institutional mandate and suitable investment.…”

“…In this perspective, the inter-organizational processes, triggered by the multi-professional, pluralistic and fragmented work contexts, have the potential to enhance the emergence of new objects of activity, to be acknowledged and negotiated (as the different professional and cultural views are at stake) to achieve a convergent and good enough commonality as collective intentionality. Similarly, the inter-organizational dimensions challenge the intra-organizational field to improve and develop a distributed agency by valorizing roles, functions and competencies in a more integrated and tuned way (Scaratti et al , 2021).…”

Data Collection in Times of Pandemic: A Self-Study and Revisit of Research Practices During a Crisis

“… Harvey (2013) suggests that foregrounding a researcher’s identity enhances research transparency and interpretation of research results. Interrogating researcher identity also enhances the level of analytical criticality as it aids researchers to be aware of their assumptions of various research decisions ( Harvey, 2013 ; Scaratti et al, 2021 ) including research questions and theoretical frameworks choices, methodological orientation, and methods of analysis ( Parker, 2020 ).…”

Supporting employability through sport: what kind of training?

“…Our perspective is based on the constructivist perspective ( 97 – 100 ) which states that in the process of generating knowledge, reflection in action and on action is fundamental. Work experience is the privileged field on which to develop knowledge, as each participant has direct experience and brings prior knowledge on the topic of training ( 99 , 101 – 103 ). The training process cannot therefore be conceived as linear and predetermined in detail a priori , but rather as a process open to emergences and continuous redesign; focused on subjectivity, reflective capacities of daily practices, and current knowledge and theories ( 5 , 104 , 105 ).…”

“…These habits, regardless of the professional field of application, are usually strongly crystallized in the daily routine of professionals. The possibility of sharing and discussing these practices with a larger group allows for analysis and, by comparing them with other professional practices, supports individual and collective processes of change ( 5 , 103 ). We also believe it is important to emphasize that, in line with the adopted training approach, we conducted a dialogic evaluation ( 108 ), aimed at investigating the training experience, both in terms of process and results.…”