Theoretical perspectives on team science
Enhancing Transdisciplinary Research Through Collaborative Leadership

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Abstract

Transcending the well-established and familiar boundaries of disciplinary silos poses challenges for even the most interpersonally competent scientists. This paper explores the challenges inherent in leading transdisciplinary projects, detailing the critical roles that leaders play in shepherding transdisciplinary scientific endeavors. Three types of leadership tasks are considered: cognitive, structural, and processual. Distinctions are made between leading small, co-located projects and large, dispersed ones. Finally, social-network analysis is proposed as a useful tool for conducting research on leadership, and, in particular, on the role of brokers, on complex transdisciplinary teams.

Introduction

Interest in transdisciplinary research has burgeoned in the last 10 years. Transdisciplinary research refers to scientific inquiry that cuts “across disciplines, integrating and synthesizing content, theory and methodology from any discipline area which will shed light on the research questions.”1 Impetus for this new trend stems from the increasing complexity of scientific problems,2, 3 from the exploration of basic research issues, from the need to solve societal problems (like sustainability and debilitating diseases), and from stimuli from generative technologies such as the Internet and magnetic resonance imaging2, 3 as well as from the increasingly wide distribution of knowledge in educated societies.4

Transdisciplinarity, as distinguished from multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity,5 requires that researchers invent new science together by exploring research questions at the intersection of their respective fields, conducting joint research projects and “developing methodologies that can be used to re-integrate knowledge.”6 While the distinctions between interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity may be difficult to tease out in practice, McMichael's notion7 that transdisciplinarity promotes “theoretical, conceptual, and methodological reorientation with respect to core concepts of the participating disciplines” is, perhaps, the most helpful. Rather than as an alternative, transdisciplinarity is envisioned as a complement to ongoing discipline-based scientific inquiry that “might lead to a different, higher, plane of inquiry”7 and enable different questions to be asked.

According to the International Center for Transdisciplinary Research,

It [transdisciplinarity] occasions the emergence of new data and new interactions from out of the encounter between disciplines. It offers us a new vision of nature and reality. Transdisciplinarity does not strive for mastery of several disciplines but aims to open all disciplines to that which they share and to that which lies beyond them.”8

Transcending the well-established and familiar boundaries of disciplinary silos, however, poses challenges for even the most interpersonally competent scientists.

This paper offers four contributions to the study of transdisciplinarity. First, it briefly explores the challenges inherent in working transdisciplinarily. Second, it focuses on the critical role of leadership in the shepherding of transdisciplinary scientific endeavors. Third, it examines the differences between single and distributed leadership in transdisciplinary teams. Finally, it conceptualizes transdisciplinary collaborations as innovation networks and illustrates how social-network analysis can augment the research on leadership in transdisciplinary teams.

Section snippets

The Challenges of Transdisciplinary Scientific Endeavors

The challenges of working across disciplines have been chronicled in a number of arenas. Numerous studies9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 have identified the difficulties associated with achieving this kind of integrated vision among scientists,9, 10 within business,11 and in cross-sectoral and global collaborative teams.12, 13, 14 While some scientific endeavors are likely to suffer from the “groupthink” which many have suggested explained the team failure that led to the Challenger disaster,15, 16

Leadership Tasks for Enhancing Transdisciplinary Collaboration

What roles can leaders play to overcome or minimize these classic failures in decision making, planning, and cognition while, at the same time, spurring innovation and creative problem solving in transdisciplinary teams? In general, research has demonstrated that appropriate leadership can enhance the overall effectiveness of teams and increase the satisfaction of team members.27, 28, 29 To build a model of leadership appropriate for transdisciplinary collaborations, findings from empirical

One Leader Or Many?

Stokols et al.63 have detailed the differences in complexity and geographic dispersion associated with transdisciplinary collaborations. While some projects may involve a small group of researchers who are collocated at a single institution, others may involve virtual, cross-institutional relationships with many scientists at each institution. Each of these extremes poses different challenges for transdisciplinary leadership, suggesting that a contingency perspective on transdisciplinary

Studying Transdisciplinary Collaborations As Innovation Networks

If transdisciplinary collaborations are conceived of as innovation networks, then social-network analysis may prove to be a useful tool for studying these collaborative initiatives and, in particular for studying leadership roles within these networks.67 Social-network analysis maps the relations within a group as a pattern of ties among the actors. Network analysis focuses on the entire system of linkages rather than on specific dyad connections.

One previous study68 of interdisciplinary

Conclusion

Transdisciplinary teams provide a fascinating new venue for the study of collaboration and collaborative leadership in particular. To be successful in these venues, leaders must assume a pivotal role in surmounting the obstacles inherent in transdisciplinary collaborations and in facilitating the emergence of major discoveries from these endeavors.69, 70 Three general tasks of transdisciplinary leaders were outlined in this paper: cognitive, structural, and processual. Effective cognitive

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