Just as the border marks the edge of a space and thus is a dividing line or area, organizing and especially organizations show material, personnel and often spatially organized boundaries (Schröer et al. 2021). As the call of ECER network 32 calls to address the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous organizational contexts of a VUCA world (Mack et al. 2016), we see seemingly stable boundaries becoming fluid. The analytical perspective of the ‘network society’ (Castells 2001) refers to the desideratum of ‘open’ knowledge arrangements, which shall support to transgress rationalities in organizing.

Organizational Education addresses learning in, of and between organizations (Göhlich et al. 2018). Therefore, the symposium addresses the notion of border and boundary crossing from different angles and at different levels. The four contributions discuss different organizational learning spaces in which boundary crossing becomes relevant in specific ways.

Organizing across boundaries for the first contribution refers to crossing the boundaries of rationalities of organizing: How to overcome a normalizing organizational rationality, still following a bureaucratic style of organizing youth at risk and in difficult life conditions? How to shift towards a relational pedagogical approach and rationality in organizing? Boundaries in this notion are understood as epistemological boundaries (Weber & Heidelmann 2021; Maschke 2022/forthcoming).

The second perspective on organizing learning across boundaries refers to transgressing physical, national and international borders as well as institutional boundaries: individual learning exchanges are meant to foster institutional learning – but does this play out? Learning in, from and between organizations is addressed in this contribution insofar as academic staff mobility takes place from one institution to another. The contribution in a European empirical survey shows the preconditions of crossing institutional boundaries in the sense to make use of the staff mobility experience and the potential coming along with it.

The third contribution again from a discourse perspective discusses boundary crossing in innovation learning arrangements between organizations. Innovation Laboratories may support openings and the collective learning between organizations. Learning here addresses learning between organizations. The contribution discusses regional learning arrangements between higher education and regional professionals and institutions – building the regional food cycle (Weber & Heidelmann 2019). In this interlinked learning arrangements, learning may happen at different layers and in different dimensions. Boundary Crossing here refers to epistemic liminality within innovation laboratories, and discusses liminality within collective experimentation. Within these settings of innovation learning, professionalization of both students in Higher Education as well as of regional stakeholders take place and will be empirically presented (Heidelmann 2022/forthcoming; Heidelmann/Klös 2022/forthcoming).

The final contribution, on the one hand, presents boundaary crossing between Higher Education and Museum Learning – introducing a trans-institutional collaboration, which highlights regional history as an educational and learning history. On the other hand, it discusses the various boundary crossings when it comes to education. Central to this is the idea that education is not a bounded area, a clearly defined sphere, but forms a uniquely linked ensemble (Latour 2014, p. 66) with other areas that are not clearly defined. This includes areas such as science, politics, economics, law, religion, technology, nature and even sciene-fiction.

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