Organizational Liminality and Interstitial Creativity: The Fellowship of Power

Formal organizations share a common set of characteristics that include identifiable operating principles and coordinating mechanisms as well as lines of authority and communication. However, some organizations — especially those on the margins of institutional fields — creatively combine institutional and anti-institutional characteristics. This tendency, which I call organizational liminality, represents a way in which certain groups resist the isomorphic tendencies of modern organizational life. By comparing a group called The Fellowship, a religious organization of national and world leaders, with peer organizations, I show how formalized liminality is an intentional organizational strategy and discuss how this produces unique resources and liabilities for the group.