Interdisciplinary Competency (InKo)
Goal
The goal of this project is to understand the specific problems interdisciplinary work teams face and what kinds of processes differentiate successful from unsuccessful projects. In addition, we also aim to identify the type of competencies that are necessary for successful collaboration and how to promote them.
Initial situation
More and more areas in both research and business rely on the successful collaboration of employees of different disciplines. This is specifically the case when it comes to solving complex problems which require that different viewpoints and implications be taken into account. But interdisciplinary projects often face specific challenges; they are not as successful as expected and require disproportionately much time and money. The term interdisciplinarity is used to describe the systematic integration of ideas from different disciplines and the development of a new joint approach. The National Academy of Science defines interdisciplinarity as “a mode (…) by teams or individuals that 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“ (National Academy of Sciences 2004, S. 26). Often though, not all factors of interdisciplinary collaboration are met and collaboration rather takes the form of a division of labor (Fiore, 2008). Interdisciplinary collaboration is not as effective as expected (Rogers, Scaife & Rizzo, 2005). Especially initiation and goal setting phases require an enormous amount of time and resources (Epstein, 2005). Colleagues from the same discipline share a common research culture, specific assumptions, theories, and methods, which differ from discipline to discipline and pose a barrier to collaboration (Laudel, 1999). Although several competencies have been referred to as critical in the literature (Aboelela et al., 2007), a systematic study of all the factors which make for “interdisciplinary competency” has not yet been conducted. Repko (2012) discusses e.g. perspective taking, capacity for reflection or appreciation of diversity as important competencies for interdisciplinary collaboration but we are still missing empirical industrial/ organizational studies and evidence on the subject.
Research questions
This research project aims to identify the factors that are associated with successful interdisciplinary projects and the competencies required for fruitful collaboration. Accordingly, our guiding research questions are: What processes differentiate successful from unsuccessful work teams? What competencies are associated with effective interdisciplinary collaboration? How can training, coaching and process consulting support interdisciplinary projects?
