Abstract
The use of discipline-specific methodologies can, over time, shape what we believe is important to know about a phenomenon, and can hinder initial conversations about that phenomenon among scholars from different disciplines. In this paper, I suggest ways in which interdisciplinary conference cultures and conference attendee interactions might attenuate these methodological influences and increase the probability of effective interdisciplinary collaboration.
Keywords
A researcher describes her empirical study of team dynamics at an interdisciplinary groups and teams conference. She has used a behavioral observation methodology, requiring the coding of certain behaviors during each 10-s segment of video-recorded team behavior as the teams worked during a simulated crisis scenario. It took almost 2 years for the researcher to gain access to the teams and the videos of their training in a multi-million-dollar training facility. It has taken an additional year for the videos to be audio-enhanced (so human coders could better hear what team members said to each other), for multiple coders to code the occurrence of the behaviors of interest, for the coded data to be analyzed, and for the manuscript describing it all to be written. The higher performing teams, she describes, were more likely than other teams to engage in certain behaviors at certain times, and more likely to display certain behavioral patterns, than were the lower performing teams.
The researcher is delighted to see hands raised for questions after her short presentation. The first exchange goes something like this:
“Did you collect any information regarding demographics, personality, attitudes, perceptions, and so forth, of the participants—any questionnaire data?”
“No, I didn’t. I was very fortunate to have been given access to the video recordings and the performance data of the teams, but beyond that, the unions representing team members would not allow surveys to be administered. All the data I collected were part of the organization’s regular training of the teams, so invasiveness was minimized.”
“So we don’t know why the high performing teams did what they did?”
“The antecedents of the behaviors were not the focus of the study—the behaviors were.”
“But how are you able to suggest to the organization how to best choose people for these types of teams, or how best to compose the teams? What are you able to give back to the organization?”
“I can tell them which behaviors at which times seem to make the most difference in the performance of the teams.”
“But you can’t tell them how to make these behaviors occur more often?”
“No.”
“Oh well.”
The researcher takes a few more questions and the session concludes. She avoids subsequent conversations, returns to her hotel room, wonders why she feels bad, and then reaches for the chocolate.
Of course, the tables could have easily been turned in this scenario, and the behavioral observation researcher could have been asking similar questions of a presenter who had used questionnaire data to measure team member characteristics and predict key behaviors and performance in teams. One can imagine the behavioral observation researcher asking questions such as, “You can link the team member characteristics you measured to team supervisors’ reports of the amounts of certain behaviors in the teams, and you can link these amounts to overall team performance, but can you say at what point in time or at least during which tasks these behaviors matter? Certainly teams must not engage in (or avoid) these behaviors constantly to perform well, right?” And likewise, one can imagine the chocolate consumption of the questionnaire-using researcher temporarily and significantly increasing after that session.
The quandary such scenarios leave us with is: How do we leverage the tremendous opportunities present at interdisciplinary meetings while avoiding enriching countless chocolatiers? In the scenarios above, each questioner identified what he or she perceived to be important knowledge gaps in the answers provided by the study presented—gaps that could have easily been addressed using the questioner’s own familiar methodology. And while methodological familiarity can lead to efficiencies for researchers, they are not only, as so often described, tools in a toolkit. Methodologies can be operational hallmarks of paradigms or ways of thinking about particular phenomena; relied on over time, they may serve to focus and simultaneously constrain not only what we can see and measure about a phenomenon, but also what we come to believe is important to know about that phenomenon. However, when exposed to different methodologies and different ways of thinking about a familiar topic, researchers are provided with a tremendous opportunity for new knowledge creation—if they can switch cognitive gears (see Louis & Sutton, 1991) and break free from the temptation to automatically hone in only on those seemingly glaring gaps. When researchers are able to ignore the gaps, “it is rather as if the professional community has been suddenly transported to another planet where familiar objects are seen in a different light and are joined by unfamiliar ones as well” (Kuhn, 1962, p. 109).
But those gaps are pesky. Researchers have been trained in their respective fields to identify gaps in their own and in other’s work, and have been rewarded for doing so. How should these scholars be able to suddenly switch off this behavior and switch on the ability to see past the knowledge gaps caused by methodological choices—and allow themselves to be transported to that other planet, so as to see familiar objects in a different and exposing light, and thus derive one of the central benefits of interdisciplinary exchanges?
Allow me to suggest that one of the possible answers to this question involves three elements: the conference culture, the presenter, and the questioner. Many of the key benefits and tribulations involved in doing interdisciplinary research have been well-documented (Cheng, Henisz, Roth, & Swaminathan, 2009), but it seems somewhat unclear how these benefits and drawbacks relate to effective and ineffective behaviors at the interdisciplinary conferences where the promise of rich, idea-producing conversations may be quashed by the focus on methodology-originating gaps. Here, I adopt a focus that uses a bottom-up approach to train attention on conference attendees’ interaction behaviors, rather than on, for example, the interdisciplinary generation of theory or research questions, or on the management of interdisciplinary research projects (Poole & Hollingshead, 2005). Aboelela and colleagues define interdisciplinary research as being “based upon a conceptual model that links or integrates theoretical frameworks from those disciplines, uses study design and methodology that is not limited to any one field, and requires the use of perspectives and skills of the involved disciplines throughout multiple phases of the research process” (2006, p. 341). But if good, deep, reciprocal conversations at interdisciplinary forums such as the INGRoup conference do not happen in the first place, how can we hope to build the effective relationships that foster solid interdisciplinary research?
Beginning Conversations
In order to foster these conversations, interdisciplinary conference organizers could send subtle and not-so-subtle messages to conference attendees. Setting the stage early for good interdisciplinary conversations to happen, conference material sent to attendees could emphasize the interdisciplinary nature of the conference and explicitly link that characteristic to examples of productive behaviors, including the expectation that attendees will strive to meet and converse with people outside one’s own discipline as well as expectations for conference session behaviors of presenters and audience members. Providing short summaries of participating disciplines’ central paradigms and methodologies, if possible, might also be helpful. Structural mechanisms such as predetermined interdisciplinary seating at events might also at least set a context for interdisciplinary conversations to begin. Taking steps such as these might help develop a more interdisciplinary conference culture that would help counteract that often-automatic desire of old intradisciplinary friends and colleagues to congregate and form seemingly impenetrable in-groups at conferences.
Additionally, presenters at interdisciplinary conferences could frame their work in ways that encourage audience members to pay less attention to perceived methodology-induced gaps and more attention to areas of fruitful interaction. Such framing might include more early and explicit clarification of project scope and boundary conditions, and include information regarding the choice of methodology. Given that interdisciplinary research revolves around “a conceptual model that links or integrates theoretical frameworks” (Aboelela et al., 2006, p. 341 [italics added]), presenters could put added emphasis on the nature of the constructs, the questions being asked, the answers suggested, and the remaining questions to be addressed—emphasis that might differ from presentations they make at intradisciplinary conferences—and thus actively invite the types of questions that may later lead to collaboration.
Finally, audience members at interdisciplinary conferences could self-monitor the questions and comments they offer presenters. By maintaining a focus on constructs and phenomena instead of taking aim at methodology- or paradigm-induced gaps, and by offering ideas that augment facets of constructs and theoretical frameworks rather than by suggesting shortcomings associated with methodological approaches, audience members would facilitate more inclusive session conversations that could possibly lead to subsequent collaboration. Importantly, audience members could self-monitor by (a) eschewing counterfactual comments in the form of “If you had done X, you might have found Y”, (b) avoiding value statements that emanate from field-specific paradigms and, (c) avoiding questions based on obviously-field-specific literature and methodologies. 1
Of course, sometimes the choice of a different methodology may indeed shed new light on knowledge about the focal construct. Comments from listeners regarding different ways to analyze or display data may provide new and fruitful avenues of exploration; suggestions to combine data sets or studies across disciplines may ultimately provide a more complete view of a phenomenon. Comments such as these, importantly, do not suggest that the presenter’s work is incomplete or wrong or misguided due to a methodological or paradigmatic choice, and do not involve counterfactual statements.
Conclusion
Interdisciplinary conferences are exciting places to be. They can serve as the cradle of nascent ideas that grow into collaborations leading to knowledge development impossible to achieve within any one discipline. The practice by conference attendees of identifying seemingly obvious gaps in others’ research—gaps produced by paradigmatic methodology choices—can also induce the purchase and consumption of significant quantities of chocolate (as well as other elixirs) by the recipients of their comments. I suggest here that by collectively focusing on the nature of the interactions at interdisciplinary conferences, and particularly on the interactions during or after conference sessions, we can limit that consumption and significantly increase the probability of conference conversations leading to productive interdisciplinary work. Chocolate is an extraordinary substance, but only when used in moderation.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.