A Study of Integration: The Role of Sensus Communis in Integrating Disciplinary Knowledge

Integration is an important notion for interdisciplinary studies. Achieving this shows that the interdisciplinary learner has successfully understood the commonalities among disciplines, as well as exercised crucial cognitive skills. This chapter attempts to elucidate how students integrated various disciplinary perspectives in the interdisciplinary course, Weird Science: Interpreting and Redefining Humanity. The study uses Hans-Georg Gadamer’s notion of the sensus communis to clarify how it was that students were processing and accomplishing the goal of integrating different disciplinary perspectives as evidenced in class observation, discussion, and especially student papers. The study demonstrates the ways in which common sense knowledge conditions and enables the integration process

Language in international business: a review and agenda for future research

A fast growing number of studies demonstrates that language diversity influences almost all management decisions in modern multinational corporations. Whereas no doubt remains about the practical importance of language, the empirical investigation and theoretical conceptualization of its complex and multifaceted effects still presents a substantial challenge. To summarize and evaluate the current state of the literature in a coherent picture informing future research, we systematically review 264 articles on language in international business. We scrutinize the geographic distributions of data, evaluate the field’s achievements to date in terms of theories and methodologies, and summarize core findings by individual, group, firm, and country levels of analysis. For each of these dimensions, we then put forward a future research agenda. We encourage scholars to transcend disciplinary boundaries and to draw on, integrate, and test a variety of theories from disciplines such as psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience to gain a more profound understanding of language in international business. We advocate more multi-level studies and cross-national research collaborations and suggest greater attention to potential new data sources and means of analysis

Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research: Finding the common ground of multi-faceted concepts

Inter- and transdisciplinarity are increasingly relevant concepts and practices within academia. While various definitions exist, a clear distinction between inter- and transdisciplinarity remains difficult. Although there is a wide consensus about the need to define and apply these approaches, there is no agreement over definitions. Building on data collected during the first year of the COST Action TD1408 “Interdisciplinarity in research programming and funding cycles” (INTREPID), this paper describes both tensions and common ground about the characteristics and building blocks of interand trans-disciplinarity. Drawing on empirical data from participatory workshops involving INTREPID network members coming from 27 different countries, the paper shows that diverse definitions of inter and trans-disciplinarity coexist within scientific literature and in the mind of researchers and practitioners. The understanding about the involvement of actors outside of academia also differs widely across scientific communities irrespective of disciplinary training or the research subjects. The focus should be on the knowledge that is required to deal with a specific problem, rather than discussing “if” and “how” to integrate actors outside the academia, and collaboration should start with joint problem framing. This diversity is, however, not an absolute obstacle to practice, since the latter is made possible through building blocks such as knowledge domains, problem- and solution- oriented approaches, common goals, as well as target knowledge. In order to move towards more effective inter- and transdisciplinary research, we identify the need for trained interdisciplinarity facilitators and ‘accompanying research’ (derived from the Danish term ‘følgeforskning’). These two roles can be essential to inter- and transdisciplinarity practices including the promotion of reflexivity

Memory studies: the state of an emergent field

The article explores the degree to which memory studies has become established as an academic field. Although we acknowledge that there are drawbacks to formal institutionalization, we contend that it is useful to think strategically about the future of memory studies. We argue that three key developments must take place in order for a field to become institutionalized. First, individual scholars must articulate the field through scientific production and collaboration. Second, higher education institutions must formally recognize the existence of the field through specialized programs and departments. And third, public and private donors must sponsor research via dedicated scholarships and grants. We use these phases as benchmarks in order to assess memory studies’ current state of development. After surveying important writings of key authors in memory studies, we test our assumptions through an online survey with 255 self-identified memory scholars. The results show memory studies to be in a mid-level state of development, where individual agents are the most active drivers of defining the boundaries of the field and driving its further establishment. The major obstacle in this process, identified in both the survey and in the literature review, is the fragmented nature of the discipline, which could be addressed through the pursuit of a more interdisciplinary (rather than multidisciplinary) research agenda

Transdisciplinarity in globalization research : the global studies framework

Contemporary globalization research increasingly occurs within the loose academic framework of “global studies,” which, in the late 1990s, emerged as a transdisciplinary endeavor exploring the many dimensions of globalization. After an initial comparative discussion of the academic use of the concept “transdisciplinarity,” this chapter argues that attempts to understand the social complexities related to today’s globalization processes raise a plethora of empirical, normative, and epistemic concerns that cannot be sorted out by specialists operating within the narrow and often rather arbitrary confines of single disciplines and their associated idioms. To illustrate these dynamics, this chapter presents concrete examples of how globalization researchers working within the global studies framework employ transdisciplinarity strategies to understand global complexity. As will be shown, they are critical of the tendency to compartmentalize social existence into discreet spheres of activity, and thus have been increasingly committed to the engagement and integration of multiple knowledge systems and research methodologies. The chapter closes with a call to extend these transdisciplinary modes of engaging in globalization research. Indeed, this transdisciplinary imperative of “globalizing the research imagination” has the potential to reenergize and reconfigure research projects across the social sciences and humanities