Leadership in Change, Uncertainty, and Liminality in the Digital Age: Examining Business Leaders through the Lens of Liminal Leadership

Change is no longer confined to occasional periods of disruption but has become an ongoing feature of organizational life. Digital transformation, artificial intelligence, globalization, evolving work arrangements, economic fluctuations, and unexpected crises continually challenge established organizational structures and leadership practices. These developments call for a broader understanding of leadership, one that considers not only how leaders pursue goals and manage change, but also how they navigate the uncertainty between established practices and emerging alternatives. This study examines the theoretical foundations and conceptual boundaries of liminal leadership, drawing on the concept of liminality developed in the anthropological work of Van Gennep and Turner, and explores its potential to explain leadership in contemporary organizations. It draws on a structured conceptual literature review and illustrative analyses of leadership examples based on secondary sources. The review focuses on the origins of liminality, liminal experiences in contemporary working life, leadership under uncertainty, the development of liminal leadership, and its relationship with other leadership approaches. The analysis suggests that liminal leadership involves interconnected processes, including sensemaking, repositioning, building relational connections, and adaptation, through which a new direction may gradually emerge. Building on existing conceptualizations, the study proposes an integrated processual model that connects the dimensions of liminal leadership with the processes through which organizational actors navigate transitional uncertainty. Rather than treating liminal leadership as limited to particular crises or transitions, the study considers it a contextual, relational, and processual perspective for understanding how leadership takes shape when change becomes an ongoing condition of organizational life. Leadership examples from different business and social contexts illustrate how its dimensions may be reflected in practice, without assuming that the individuals examined can be definitively classified as liminal leaders.