The Toolbox Dialogue Initiative

The Power of Cross-Disciplinary Practice

Graham Hubbs, Michael O'Rourke, Steven Hecht Orzack, Graham Hubbs, Michael O'Rourke, Steven Hecht Orzack

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429801747
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Communication
• Index: Business

Cross-disciplinary scientific collaboration is emerging as standard operating procedure for many scholarly research enterprises. And yet, the skill set needed for effective collaboration is neither taught nor mentored. The goal of the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative is to facilitate cross-disciplinary collaboration. This book, inspired by this initiative, presents dialogue-based methods designed to increase mutual understanding among collaborators so as to enhance the quality and productivity of cross-disciplinary collaboration. It provides a theoretical context, principal activities, and evidence for effectiveness that will assist readers in honing their collaborative skills.

Key Features

• Introduces the Toolbox Dialogue method for improving cross-disciplinary collaboration
• Reviews the theoretical background of cross-disciplinary collaboration and considers the communication and integration challenges associated with such collaboration
• Presents methods employed in workshop development and implementation
• Uses various means to examine the effectiveness of team-building exercises

Related Titles

Fam, D., J. Palmer, C. Riedy, and C. Mitchell. Transdisciplinary Research and Practice for Sustainability Outcomes (ISBN: 978-1-138-62573-0)

Holland, D. Integrating Knowledge through Interdisciplinary Research: Problems of Theory and Practice (ISBN: 978-1-138-91941-9)

Padmanabhan, M. Transdisciplinary Research and Sustainability: Collaboration, Innovation and Transformation (ISBN: 978-1-138-21640-2)

1 Communication Failure and Cross-​Disciplinary Research

Stephen Crowley
Michael O’Rourke

1.1The Difference Dilemma

In 2010, a snack food company decided that it wanted its products to be in the deli sections of supermarkets because deli sections are perceived to be the “cool” parts of supermarkets, with all that entails in regard to pricing and sales. The company hired a group of ethnographers to come up with compelling, research-​based arguments for locating its products in the deli sections (Sunderland 2016). The ethnographers conducted interviews, did field observations, and ran focus groups. Their report focused on the meanings shoppers associated with delis and what these implied for their client’s products. In Sunderland’s words (p. 126):

We discussed food as a form of cultural capital entailing trajectories of travel, discovery, adventure, or health, all of which we detailed with the experiences of our research participants. We talked about how delis fit practically, emotionally, and symbolically within the context of daily life. In a daylong presentation that included numerous illustrative edited video and audio excerpts of the ethnographic material, we then went on to focus more specifically on the dynamics of shopping deli areas versus interior aisles of stores and on the salient contexts for choosing specific delis. Finally, we focused on our client’s product categories: how these products were semiotically constructed in delis and in grocery, and how these products were shopped and consumed.

Unfortunately, this way of thinking about delis and snack foods did not align with the client’s way of thinking. For the client, questions about the value of locating snack foods in deli sections concerned basic economics—​what needs were being met and how customers made their purchasing decisions. From the client’s perspective, the key questions were (p. 127):

What were deli “purchase drivers?” What “needs” were consumers fulfilling when they purchased items in the deli? How did they make their decisions (i.e., “What are consumers’ decision trees?”)? These were the questions he insisted needed answers; these, he maintained, were the questions of interest for both retailers and his corporation, and in our research presentation, we had not answered them.

The client was not prepared to consider the alternative framing of the material that the ethnographers presented, and so the final report prepared by the ethnographers was expressed only in the framework the client demanded. Consequently, the company’s thinking about delis didn’t change. Sunderland concludes that the company missed a chance to become a thought leader in this area.

We begin with this anecdote because it exemplifies what we call the “Difference Dilemma.” One horn of this dilemma corresponds to research endeavors that emphasize the perspective of a single discipline. This emphasis has the virtue of streamlining the framing of the research problem, the language used to talk about it, and the methods used to respond to it, thereby avoiding the kind of failure described above. However, this single-​discipline approach may reduce the ability of the research to address complex problems in ways that do justice to their complexity. The result can be a simplistic response that does more harm than good. The other horn is the cross-​disciplinary one that embraces difference, choosing the prospect of making real progress in addressing a complex problem despite the very real potential of project failure. (In this book, we use “cross-​disciplinary” generically to apply across the range of phenomena that could be described as multi-​, inter-​, or transdisciplinary; we will use a more specific term only when the specificity is required by the context.)

Once you are aware of the Difference Dilemma, you can find it in many contexts where people seek to understand complex phenomena (e.g., academic research projects, environmental conservation projects, or local planning efforts). In spite of the risks, task groups, institutions, funding agencies, and researchers increasingly choose the cross-​disciplinary approach when trying to address complex problems (Van Noorden 2015). In fact, there are many projects that require different forms of expertise in order to make progress. In these cases, difference is critical—​without it, these projects cannot do justice to their goals. However, the presence of these different forms of expertise increases the likelihood of failure. Although the ethnographers in the deli example met the company’s requirements, their way of understanding the situation was so disconnected from the client’s interests that it seemed like they had changed the subject.

The need to address complex problems continues to increase, and as a result interest in the Difference Dilemma has also risen over the past few decades. In particular, there has been significant discussion of issues at the heart of the Difference Dilemma. For instance, Campbell (2005), in discussing lessons she learned from her work as a social scientist collaborating with conservation biologists, describes both opportunities and challenges associated with an attempt to synthesize different visions of good research practice. For Campbell, the challenge is that (p. 575) “Social and natural scientists often approach conservation from different perspectives, both in terms of defining the problem and determining the appropriate approach to understanding it.” Interdisciplinary collaboration can be very rewarding, since recognition of differences in how collaborators approach a problem can spur deeper reflection on one’s own research approach and can also supply opportunities to create new connections and insights among disciplines. But it can also be very challenging, since different disciplinary perspectives are often so ingrained that it can be difficult for a researcher to identify and acknowledge them. If left unaddressed, such differences can undermine interdisciplinary collaboration, especially (p. 575) if they “arise unexpectedly and at an inopportune moment (e.g., when trying to finalize project outputs).”

Bracken and Oughton (2006) describe similar challenges when combining differing disciplinary expertise. They focus on how to build communication resources to facilitate successful interdisciplinary collaboration. For them, what is needed is (p. 373) “to understand the ways of thought and language of others.” In an interdisciplinary project, differences are often manifested in the language used by collaborators. These differences are most obvious when we focus on disciplinary jargon that is mysterious to outsiders, but more insidiously they also reside under terms that seem to be held in common across disciplines. Bracken and Oughton discuss terms such as “dynamic” that are differently understood across disciplines. They address how different ways of thought are manifested in the language used within interdisciplinary projects and how shared understanding of these differences is key to taking advantage of multiple forms of expertise. Along with this potential advantage, however, comes the possibility of confusion that could undermine the project. Once again, in our terms, we find reflections of a choice forced by the Difference Dilemma. (For more on these issues, see Chapter 4.)

In summary, when we grapple with complex problems, we are likely to encounter the Difference Dilemma. When we do, we have two choices:

(1)Reject difference and adopt a uni-​disciplinary approach to the problem, as the corporation did in the example above. This results in a partial understanding of the problem, at best.

(2)Embrace difference and adopt a cross-​disciplinary approach to the problem. This results in a fuller understanding of the problem, when things go well, or confusion and misunderstanding, when things do not.

The desire to address and perhaps even solve a complex problem motivates selection of the cross-​disciplinary horn of the dilemma. In doing so, one takes on risks that can play out as confusion, intractable disagreement, and deal-​breaking divisiveness, all due to the disciplinary differences that one embraces in making this choice. This is a classic high risk/​high reward vs. low risk/​low reward dilemma, unless we can change the odds so that we manage differences to promote the likelihood of fuller understanding and reduce the likelihood of misunderstanding. This volume is devoted to deepening our understanding of the cross-disciplinary choice and suggesting ways of managing it so that we can successfully address the Difference Dilemma.

1.2Failure Literature

The deli example is a failed interdisciplinary project, in the sense that the researchers’ preferred way of motivating the placement of products in the deli section was deemed a non-​starter by the company that hired them. Many people who engage in collaborative cross-​disciplinary work believe that cross-​disciplinary efforts fail more frequently than disciplinary efforts (MacLeod 2018; Fam and O’Rourke 2020). This book is dedicated to helping cross-​disciplinary projects avoid failure. It provides an account of the theoretical foundation and the practical aspects of an effort—​the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative (TDI)—​that both studies and facilitates cross-​disciplinary research. As our opening vignette illustrates, cross-​disciplinary projects can fail because partners in the project have difficulty communicating with one another. Through dialogue-​based workshops designed to enhance collaborative communication, TDI supplies teams with resources they can use to address the challenge of communicating across differences and to avoid project failure.

As a first step to understanding how to prevent the failure of cross-​disciplinary projects, it is helpful to know the various ways in which such projects can fail. First, there is collapse, which occurs when a project falls apart before it attains any objectives, often before they really get started (Norris et al. 2016). Collapse might occur because it takes too long to develop the mutual understanding required for successful interaction with your collaborators (Lélé and Norgaard 2005) or because of the difficulty of securing the mutual respect needed for full participation of all involved (Campbell 2005; Gardner 2013). These and other challenges can undermine the commitment and persistence required for cross-​disciplinary success.

A cross-​disciplinary project can also fail by not achieving project objectives. This can happen when objectives are altered while the project remains intact (e.g., O’Malley 2013). These adjustments to a project’s objectives may be attributable to a number of factors, e.g., loss of key personnel, an overly ambitious schedule, or inability of the team to integrate their perspectives (Jakobsen et al. 2004). When it comes to meeting antecedently specified objectives, cross-​disciplinary projects can be especially vexing, since it can be difficult to know in advance what the integrative capacity of the team will be or how the different perspectives will come together in integrative combination (Klein 2012; Salazar et al. 2012; Piso et al. 2016). In cases where failure to meet objectives does not lead to project failure, the desire to keep the team together, perhaps because of sunk costs and the need to get something out of one’s effort, can override the motivation to leave this riskier mode of research practice and return to projects that are safer, such as disciplinary projects that present fewer obstacles.

Another key step in preventing failure is to learn from past failures. Learning from failure in cross-​disciplinary research projects can be difficult. In many contexts, there is a premium attached to reporting success, which disincentivizes lingering over projects that don’t work out. Projects may be encouraged to “fail fast” so that participants can move on to the next (hopefully) successful project (Babineaux and Krumboltz 2013). This does not leave time for writing up the reasons why a project failed, which can be a fraught exercise given the potential for damaging relationships with collaborators who may view the experience differently or who may not want a record of it.

However, as cross-​disciplinary scholarship has grown in importance, published descriptions of failures in cross-​disciplinary projects have increased. These are invaluable in the context of helping us learn from prior experiences, especially in regard to problems rooted in unappreciated differences among collaborators (Jakobsen et al. 2004; Della Chiesa et al. 2009). For example, there is a tendency on the part of collaborators to believe that they agree with one another—​that they see their project in essentially the same way (Bracken and Oughton 2006). This positions them to explain away apparent difference (cf. Grice 1989), which can lead them to ignore important differences that deserve attention. What is missing in these cases is team reflexivity, understood as the capacity to support the recognition and consideration of differences among collaborators.

1.3The Toolbox Dialogue Initiative

At this point you may be tempted to throw this book away and give up your plans to work with collaborators from other knowledge-​making traditions. After all, we’ve described how such collaborations can be more challenging than disciplinary projects and, for this reason, more prone to failure. However, we encourage you to keep reading! In the pages that follow, we describe how and why the chances of success for cross-​disciplinary collaboration can be increased.

We first ask you to consider the possibility that you and your potential collaborators think about the world more differently than you suspect. Furthermore, many of these differences in perspective may inform how you practice your research without you recognizing it. This can make those differences hard to negotiate. Some differences within cross-​disciplinary teams are obvious, such as the disciplinary backgrounds of participants. Some are less obvious, such as the different ways that disciplinary background, understood to be the tacit operation of the core beliefs and values that one acquires in becoming a disciplinary expert, and personal experience shape the practice of team members in pursuit of team goals. Differences like these are particularly pressing when team goals are significantly open ended, as they often are on knowledge-​making teams. If your goal is to leverage the differences among teammates, then an important first step to doing this systematically is to make these differences explicit and coordinate them.

TDI is devoted to understanding and facilitating this important first step. The centerpiece of this approach is the Toolbox workshop, a team activity organized around a structured d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Editors
• Contributors
• 1 Communication Failure and Cross-​Disciplinary Research
• 2 How It Works: The Toolbox Dialogue Method in Practice
• 3 A Narrative History of the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative
• 4 The Landscape of Challenges for Cross-​Disciplinary Activity
• 5 Communication and Integration in Cross-​Disciplinary Activity
• 6 The Power of Philosophy
• 7 The Power of Dialogue
• 8 Best Practices for Planning and Running a Toolbox Workshop
• 9 Enhancing Cross-​Disciplinary Science through Philosophical Dialogue: Evidence of Improved Group Metacognition for Effective Collaboration
• 10 Qualitative Analyses of the Effectiveness of Toolbox Dialogues
• 11 Future Directions for the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative
• 12 Toolbox Workshop Case Studies
• Appendix A. Scientific Research Toolbox Instrument
• Appendix B. Examples of Toolbox Dialogue
• Index