Transdisciplinary approaches to engineering R&D: Importance of understanding values and culture

Abstract

The emerging classification of Sustainability-oriented Innovation Systems places an emphasis on the social elements of change, as well as the technological. However, sustainability-oriented problems are too vast for one person or discipline to comprehend; thus people tend to want to collaborate, meaning they form teams. As a further extension to address sustainability-oriented problems, there is an increasing emphasis on transdisciplinary research and development (R&D) efforts, whereby coproduction transgresses boundaries, and science becomes visible before it becomes certain. To reach the objectives of transdisciplinary R&D efforts will require two key concepts: the gathering of information from experts, namely, knowledge transfer; and making connections between them, namely, knowledge integration. Nevertheless, challenges have been noted in terms of academic tribes that impede teamwork, and, importantly, the lack of combined thought and action in R&D. This chapter explores the collaboration, between disciplines, that has been described as the means of meeting the requirements of transdiscplinary R&D to identify, structure, analyze, and deal with specific problems in such a way that it can: grasp the complexity of problems; take into account the diversity of life-world and scientific perceptions of problems; link abstract and case-specific knowledge; and develop knowledge and practices that promote what is perceived to be the common good. However, the latter brings into question how values and culture influence collaboration and thus transdisciplinary R&D efforts. The chapter subsequently builds on an introduced conceptual framework to understand how the values and culture of individuals in a transdisciplinary R&D team, as well as those of the organization, determine the potential success or failure of the R&D effort. A case study in the bio-energy field is used as basis. The R&D project, which spanned over 3 years in South Africa, required a transdisciplinary team of engineers and scientists of various fields to collaborate with stakeholders outside the R&D team. The case emphasizes that the lack of engineering disciplines to recognize, understand, and incorporate values and culture into R&D practices will lead to project failure; pre-empting and managing expectations of social change (often) far outweigh the necessity for technological change. A number of recommendations are thus made to improve sustainable engineering R&D practices.