Sub-theme 77: Third Spaces of Hybridity: Career Mobility and Knowledge Production between Academic and Practitioner Communities ---> CANCELLED!
Call for Papers
Institutional and structural factors have changed and impacted directly academic work, identities and careers (Skopek et
al., 2020). Possibilities of employment in universities across Europe decrease but the demand for productivity of young researchers
increases (Corsini et al., 2022). Waiting lists in the form of post docs and precarious jobs sometimes block the careers of
young researchers who aspire to have a permanent position driven by a vocational ideal, even if it means to be “content to
be sad” (Lam & de Campos, 2015). However, attaining full professorship is sometimes “simply a hazard” (Weber,
1918, cited in Lam, 2019), or at least, there is greater uncertainty and intense competition in academic career progression
or entering the profession.
Meanwhile, new types of academics, hybrids, pracademics (or
quasi-academics), including academic entrepreneurs (Fini, Perkman & Ross, 2022) have emerged in the
fluid ‘overlapping labour markets’ bridging academia and other institutional sectors (Lam, 2011, 2020, 2021). These “hybrids”
combine resources from both academic and non-academic fields to develop their careers and professional identities. The hybrid
segment of the academic/scientific workforce has always existed but the growth of project-based employment, coupled with recent
changes in the rules governing knowledge production have contributed to its enlargement and prominence.
Overlapping
Internal Labour Market (OILM) refers to an innovative employment system between organizations other than the traditional internal
or professional labour markets (Lam 2007; Lam & Marsden, 2017). It is a hybrid labor market that elaborates the synthesis
between the requirements of an academic mode of knowledge production and a more interdisciplinary and collaborative mode (academics/practitioners),
leading to greater diversity in possible career options. Consequently, the traditional linear model of academic career underpinning
the ideal of science as a vocation as the only career script (Dany, Louvette and Valette, 2011) no longer reflects the more
diverse careers experienced. Collaborations between university and industry and involving one or more public research laboratories,
facilitate career mobility and knowledge co-production across organizational and institutional boundaries (Culié et al., 2014;
Valette and Culié, 2015).
In this subtheme, we aim to examine the emerging hybrid space between academic
and practitioner communities in and around employment and knowledge production systems.
The concept of “Third
Space of Hybridity” (Bhabha, 1994) has proved useful to explain the micro dynamics of career mobility and knowledge production
across professional roles boundaries (Lam, 2018), or knowledge transfer possibilities within power relations between worlds
(Frenkel, 2008). The third space is an agency space wherein actors creatively negotiate and translate knowledge across different
work roles, contexts, cultural and activity systems.
This subtheme thus invites papers that investigate the
in-between – the crossroads – in which the transformations of researchers, labour markets and knowledge occur through
career mobility, enabling knowledge combination and innovation between academic and practitioner communities. We would like
to encourage conceptual and empirical papers addressing the following (non-exhaustive) questions:
What kind
of third spaces of hybridity exist / form throughout career mobility of researchers and how generative are they for career
agency and knowledge brokering (e.g., “overlapping space” and “transitional space” from Lam, 2018)? The
existence of think tanks, in which researchers operate in hybrid spaces and gain legitimacy at the intersection of multiple
social fields (academia, business, the media and politics) is a case in point. Labor Market Intermediaries could also be investigated
in relation to connecting organizations through the making of a third valuation space in which they act as institutional entrepreneurs
(Lorquet, Orianne & Pichault, 2017).
Whilst time is closely related to career studies (Mayrhofer &
Gunz, 2022), the concept of career mobility often overlooks how knowledge actually travels through time and space. More research
is needed to understand the capacities of workers and academics to reflectively overcome the constrains, difficulties and
contradictions they may encounter in their transitions across contexts and work roles while combining, negotiating and translating
knowledge. For instance, understanding a third space of hybridity as a reflexive practice (Hibbert, 2022) in time and space
could be relevant. Also, more research is needed to conceptualize the time-space dimension of career mobility in more processual
views.
How to conceptualize the intentionality of actors to become knowledge brokers via third spaces? Classic
conceptualization considers the relationship between the epistemic object and the scientific person (subject), the latter
being driven by a sense of incompleteness of the former (Knorr-Cetina, 2005). A skilled dialogue between domain boundaries
(negotiation and translation) creates the third space of hybridity but is also determined by a willingness to engage in it
beyond traditional researcher communities. Power relationships and traditional reproduction in socialization processes (Cilesiz
et Greckhamer, 2022) can also hinder the formation of such space.
Furthermore, a careful attention to the
peculiarities of contexts is needed while theorizing and analysing hybrid spaces: careers and contexts are closely related
(Tams et al., 2020). A close look at theorizing methods could help (Canolle & Vinot, 2021).
Also, more
diverse professional trajectories could be analysed: what about the failures of such spaces and hybridity (the marginalized)
and their impacts; or other career mobility from academia to industry at large (including associations, political organizations,
NGOs, healthcare organizations…) and conversely (those who started a PhD late in their career to become academics and full
professors); or social sciences.
Finally, could we consider knowledge production with the same norms and
ethos as in Weber’s time? Hybrid academics can change drastically the norms and practices of knowledge production while dialogically
spanning knowledge, identities and work role boundaries (Lam 2021). Another area warrant further attention is the role of
HRM in supporting diverse/hybrid careers or spaces of hybridization through organizational interaction and learning (Holmqvist,
2003; Pichault & Schoenaers, 2003), without undermining scientific knowledge production.
References
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- Canolle, F., & Vinot, D. (2021). What is your PhD worth? The value of a PhD for finding employment outside of academia. European Management Review, 18(2), 157-171.
- Cilesiz, S., & Greckhamer, T. (2022). Methodological socialization and identity: A bricolage study of pathways toward qualitative research in doctoral education. Organizational Research Methods, 25(2), 337-370.
- Corsini, A., Pezzoni, M., & Visentin, F. (2022). What makes a productive Ph. D. student?. Research Policy, 51(10), 104561.
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- Fini, R., Perkmann, M., & Ross, J. M. (2022). Attention to exploration: The effect of academic entrepreneurship on the production of scientific knowledge. Organization Science, 33(2), 688-715.
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- Mayrhofer, W., & Gunz, H. (2022). From wallflower to life and soul of the party: acknowledging time’s role at center stage in the study of careers. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 1-43.
- Pichault, F., & Schoenaers, F. (2003). HRM practices in a process of organisational change: A contextualist perspective. Applied Psychology, 52(1), 120-143.
- Skopek, J., Triventi, M., & Blossfeld, H. P. (2020). How do institutional factors shape PhD completion rates? An analysis of long-term changes in a European doctoral program. Studies in Higher Education, 1-20.
- Tams, S., Kennedy, J. C., Arthur, M. B., & Chan, K. Y. (2021). Careers in cities: An interdisciplinary space for advancing the contextual turn in career studies. Human Relations, 74(5), 635-655.
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