The aim and scope of this study do not allow a thorough discussion of the history of academic science and its disciplinary or otherwise organization in any detail. However, to understand the concept of interdisciplinary research (IDR) it is important to differentiate between and clarify the conceptual basis of several terms used while describing interdisciplinarity, including discipline, multi- , inter- , and transdisciplinarity.
Most interpretations of the concept of ‘discipline’ in the literature define it along organizational and cognitive dimensions (Hinkel, 2008). On the organizational dimension, scientific disciplines are defined with respect to the existence of institutions such as university departments, education programs, conferences and journals. On the cognitive dimension, scientific disciplines are defined with respect to their member’s sharing certain cognitive structures, such as concepts, theories, methods and problem definitions. Disciplines are believed to be the product of the professionalization of scientific practice and can be identified as fields of specialization for study and investigation (Becker and Trowler, 2001; Hinkel, 2008; Mollinga, 2009).
Most technological and scientific advances are claimed as evidence of the usefulness of having science organized into various disciplines. Research, however, notes that disciplinary organization of science is not a static phenomenon in itself, rather a continuous transition occurs and transforms disciplines through two antithetic processes, differentiation and integration (Klein, 1990). As time proceeds, a growth in the number of disciplines can be witnessed in terms of ever increasing numbers of disciplinary and specialized teaching programs, text books and journals addressing various fields.
Despite the advantages of research being organized along disciplinary lines, there has always been an urge and the need to overcome the disciplinary organization of science (Wohl, 1955; Klein, 1990). One reason for such an urge is that the cooperation between disciplines has been an important source of innovation for advancing individual disciplines (Kostoff, 2002; Hall et al., 2008). Another reason is that many of the scientific and practical problems society faces cannot be solved by the knowledge of a single
discipline alone (Funtowics and Ravetz, 1993; Kates et al., 2001; Cash et al., 2002; Komiyama and Takeuchi, 2006; Yoshikawa, 2008).
The fact that the number of disciplinary scientific journals is far higher and ever increasing compared to those which publish cross disciplinary work indicates that the urge to undertake and publish cross-disciplinary work meets challenges owing largely to disciplinary epistemic cultures, as the members of disciplines act as tribes and communities (Becher and Trowler, 2001) and resist attempts that might result into losing their disciplinary identities and cultures. The contestation amongst scientific disciplines is often a proxy for paradigmatic differences in view of and approach to science by various disciplines, however (ibid).
Interdisciplinary research, therefore, is still not a mainstream phenomenon despite its potential advantages. Scholars studying and promoting interdisciplinary research increasingly believe that the existing organization of science into disciplines constrains promotion of any cross-disciplinary work, and institutional arrangements and incentive structures need to reconsidered (Newell, 2001; Stokols et al., 2008) to promote and nurture interdisciplinary practice in science..
A vast amount of literature has attempted to understand the conceptual aspects of the interactions between different disciplines. The banners of multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary have been used for referring to different forms of cross-disciplinary collaboration, albeit by different authors differently (Klein, 1990; van den Besselaar and Heimeriks, 2001; Collins, 2002; Barry et al., 2008; Fiore, 2008; Aram, 2011)21. Likewise, the labels of boundary crossing, for example (Mollinga, 2008; Owens
et al., 2008), integrative research (Tress et al., 2005), and synthesiology (Yoshikawa,
2008) are also used to refer to cross-disciplinary interactions in science.
The simplest form of collaboration between disciplines is often called multidisciplinary, whereby an issue is researched from the perspectives of various disciplines, but each
discipline produces its own results. The distinction between multi and interdisciplinarity is that in multidisciplinarity interaction several disciplines cooperate but remain unchanged, working with standard disciplinary framings and in interdisciplinarity there is an attempt to integrate or synthesize perspectives from several disciplines. Therefore, Klein (1990:56) characterizes multidisciplinarity as “additive not integrative” in nature, and interdisciplinarity as “integrative and holistic”.
Scholars22 tend to refer to a form of scientific collaboration as ‘interdisciplinary research (IDR)’, in which a common scientific problem is solved jointly by different disciplines, and in doing so, knowledge from several disciplines is not simply added up but integrated. Thus, IDR aims to produce one common perspective rather than segregated disciplinary perspectives. IDR integrates information, data, techniques, tools, perspectives, concepts, and/or theories from two or more disciplines or bodies of specialized knowledge to advance fundamental understanding or to solve problems whose solutions are beyond the scope of a single discipline or field of research practice (CoFIR, et al., 2005).
Interdisciplinarity, therefore, implies a practice of working across traditional disciplinary boundaries (Dalgaard et al., 2003). IDR can be operationalized as research that spans over and crosses the boundaries of more than a single discipline, and thus releases
inquiry from the restrictions of disciplinary boundaries of a single discipline. The overarching goal behind IDR is the systematic integration of ideas (Fiore, 2008). IDR,
therefore, needs to lead to the design of new types of complex empirical approaches along with integrated analyses combining methods and concepts from participating disciplines (Klein, 1996).
22 In order to provide open access to scientific information to the larger public on advances in interdisciplinarity a
specialized transdisciplinary network (td-net) was launched in 2000 by the Swiss Academic Society for Environmental Research and Ecology and taken over by the Swiss Academy of Sciences in 2003 for facilitating interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity through offering a database of interdisciplinary literature. The network also organizes conferences, expert consultations and other forms of dialogues to discuss emerging topics in inter and transdisciplinary research. Since 2008 the td-net for transdisciplinary research has been a project of the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences. Interested reader is referred to their website http://www.transdisciplinarity.ch/e/About/
Analytical and theoretical links between different scientific disciplines are required in IDR. The interaction between disciplines and disciplinary specialists in an interdisciplinary venture may range from communication and comparison of ideas, and the exchange of data, methods and procedures, to the mutual integration of organizing concepts, theories, methodology, and epistemological principles (van den Besselaar and Heimeriks, 2001). A successful IDR exercise would, therefore, imply a common problem definition, conceptual frameworks and methodical standards; and organizational preconditions allowing for a suitable working basis (Conrad, 2002).
Klein (1996) differentiates between two spectra of IDR as instrumental and critical. In the former, societal and academic problems are solved by borrowing and adapting tools and methods from various disciplines. In the later, the explanation and theorizing by one discipline is reflected upon through use of concepts and theories by another field of specialization. Knowledge and critique from various disciplines is unified. What is implied in these two forms is the degree and rigor of IDR. IDR would be called ‘instrumental’ if, for example, one discipline only borrows tools or concepts from the other, and it would be called ‘critical’ if the integration between the disciplines produces new and common theoretical explanation by various disciplines, or the basic assumptions behind the disciplinary explanation are reflected upon (Burawoy, 2005) using the lenses from another discipline23.
Another typology of interdisciplinary research is offered by (Morillo et al., 2003), who differentiate between ‘big’ and ‘small’ interdisciplinarity. In their view, the former happens when collaboration between two or more distant disciplines, for example, engineering and sociology takes place and the latter happens when disciplines close by cooperate. An example of the latter would be collaboration between chemistry and biochemistry.
23 For a detailed discussion on the distinction between the concepts of instrumentality and reflexivity in public sociology, interested reader is referred to Burawoy (2005)
Summing up the above discussion, one could visualize several levels of interdisciplinarity that could possibly take place in an IDR exercise (Figure 3.1). The minimum level at which a research venture would qualify for being called IDR would be where only information exchange takes place amongst the participating disciplines. It would increasingly progress towards a common theorizing of the problem following the stages of exchange of ideas, borrowing and integrating concepts, integrating tools from other disciplines into those used by the major field, borrowing, adopting, and integrating theories and explanations from other fields. It is to be noted that to achieve the highest level in IDR, all other levels of IDR have to be passed. In other words, no IDR exercise could achieve a common theorizing unless it passes through all the stages below it in Figure 3.1.
Figure 3.1 Increasing levels of expected interdisciplinarity in IDTs
Source: Authors compilation based on literature review.
In recent decades, scholarship has increasingly also attempted to undertake empirical research to understand and elaborate various aspects of interdisciplinary research (for example Conrad, 2002; Morillo et al., 2003; Santoro et al., 2003; Fiore, 2008; Lyall et
al., 2011). Most IDR exercises are, depending on the nature and scope of the research, a
team exercise (Fiore, 2008), as scientists from various disciplines collaborate. In order to practice IDR successfully, it requires the participants to have the capacity to communicate. Scholarship tends to discern cross-disciplinary exercises that transcend disciplinary boundaries, and in this venture, have discerned interdisciplinary research from transdisciplinary research (TDR).
Sharing information, data, perspectives from participating disciplines Integrating tools/approaches/paradigms from participating disciplines
Integrating concepts from participating disciplines Integrating tools and methods from other disciplines
Integrating explanatory theories from participating fields Common theory agreed by all participating disciplines
‘… ideas of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity imply a variety of boundary transgressions, in which the disciplinary and disciplining rules, trainings and subjectivities given by existing knowledge corpuses are put aside or superseded’ (Barry et al., 2008: 1).
While IDR transcends through various academic disciplines and attempts to answer scientific and academic questions, TDR24 transcends through academic and practical disciplines to assist in solving practical issues and real life challenges (Mollinga, 2009) and providing advice to policy makers. While both of these forms aim at integrating knowledge, the former appears to be more of an academic and scientific nature, while the latter focuses on solving real life problem (Hinkel, 2008). Both these forms of cross- disciplinary integration can not be seen as substitutes to disciplinarity, but as a complementary problem-orientated research principle; implying lateral thinking against established disciplines, methods and institutions without however aiming at creating necessarily new disciplines (van den Besselaar and Heimeriks, 2001).
In Hinkel’s view, TDR is a research principle that aims at overcoming disciplinary insularity in those cases in which disciplinary concepts and methods do not match the problems to be solved. This is particularly true for problems that are raised outside of the scientific system, such as, e.g., problems associated with climate change in general. When the concept of transdisciplinarity is used in a wider sense to refer to the collaboration between scientific and non-scientific participants, coded, tacit and traditional knowledge integration remains the central aim of transdisciplinarity (Komiyama and Takeuchi, 2006).
Transdisciplinary problem-oriented and problem solving in the wider sense is frequently also labeled as ‘assessment’ instead of research (Hinkel, 2008). Examples are integrated assessment, vulnerability assessment, environmental impact assessment, technology
24 An exception to these general differences between IDR and TDR can be noted in IDR about medical sciences, where they tend to equate TDR to IDR (for example, Gray, 2008).
assessment and sustainability assessment. The term ‘research’ appears to be reserved for the intra-scientific practice of problem solving whereas the term ‘assessment’ appears to refer to the joint problem solving amongst science and other stakeholders. In assessments, problem solving is driven by the purpose to inform policy and decision-making, rather than to advance knowledge for its intrinsic value (Hinkel, 2008).
The proponents of IDR in medical studies (for instance Hall et al., 2008; Stokols et al., 2008; Falk-Krzesinski et al., 2010), have called IDR as a team science (TS). They have also coined the term describing research about IDR as “science of team science (SciTS)” to refer to conceptual, methodological, and empirical inquiries aimed at understanding and enhancing the processes and outcomes of collaborative, team-based research. SciTS is concerned with understanding and managing circumstances that facilitate or hinder the effectiveness of collaborative cross-disciplinary scientific research.
What transpires from the discussion in this section is that the differences between disciplinary, multi- and interdisciplinary research are pronounced and vivid. Disciplinary research aims to provide explanations and theorizing from a single perspective, multidisciplinary research provides several explanations from various perspectives and interdisciplinary research aims to consolidate, synthesize and integrate perspectives, knowledge, approaches, and tools at various levels. These levels of integration can be multiple and progressive, as explained in Figure 3.1. Lowest levels of integration take place when, for example, more than one discipline use and regard each others’ data as valid data, despite having different epistemological assumptions and methods. Highest level of integration happens when a common explanation and theorizing is agreed between two or more disciplines, or a new and improved explanation is arrived at through reflection on two or more disciplinary explanations.
The difference between inter and transdisciplinary integration is that in the former, the sources of knowledge that is integrated are scientific and coded, whereas for the later the sources are both, scientific knowledge as well as local and practical knowledge.
The present research is an inquiry into the role that capacity-building, together with other factors, plays in nurturing interdisciplinarity amongst scientific teams, and therefore, falls into what is above described as science of team science. As is explained in Chapter 2, the interdisciplinary problem ZEF’s IDR teams faced was to come up with a suitable approach towards testing a scientifically developed innovation further together with the real life stakeholders in their real life situations. Each of these teams faced two distinct problems: a) to develop itself into an interdisciplinary team (IDT) around an innovation by integrating knowledge, skills, and expertise of the team members from different disciplines; and b) to engage with and integrate the knowledge of actual stakeholders into these IDTs and gradually transform their respective IDT into a transdisciplinary team (TDT). Each of the IDR teams comprised researchers from natural, economic, and social sciences (Chapter 4).
The section that follows examines various theories explaining team behaviors, members’ learning, and team effectiveness.