Accommodating Interdisciplinary Research

Abstract

As made evident by the information work, organizational structures, cultural conditions, and knowledge requirements involved in boundary crossing research, the scientists have developed sophisticated methods and routines that help them in their interdisciplinary endeavors. All of the scientists have found ways to gather information and communicate with researchers in other fields and overcome the departmental and disciplinary barriers that make it d ifficu lt to interact across disciplinary boundaries. To do this, some researchers rely heavily on the Center, and others have devised structures and strategies that are less entwined with the Center’s resources or remain largely independent of the institution. It has been argued that the execution of interdisciplinary inquiry should radically alter the procedures of research and that it is insufficient to merely accommodate interdisciplinarity within existing structures or with fabricated bridge-building institutions (Fuller 1993). That proposition has merit as an ideal, but it does not help us to substantiate what is really happening in the work worlds of academic researchers where interdisciplinarity is not well understood and is rarely well supported. In essence, the Center is in the business of accommodating i nterd i scipli narity and buffering it from the deterrents ingrained in the system of academic higher education and research.