Int J Educ Vocat Guidance (2009) 9:101–110

DOI 10.1007/s10775-009-9155-2

Multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary,
and transdisciplinary collaboration: implications
for vocational psychology

Audrey Collin

Received: 15 January 2008 / Accepted: 21 August 2008 / Published online: 19 March 2009

Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Abstract The literature on interdisciplinarity identifies several forms of collabo-

ration: multidisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and interdisciplinary (as bridge building
or integration). To assist vocational psychology translate its interdisciplinary dis-
course into action, this paper uses that literature to identify the benefits, challenges
and conditions for success. It indicates that the form of collaboration needed must
be decided, and the cognitive, social, organizational and institutional aspects of the
collaborating disciplines considered. It highlights the significance of interpersonal
relationships when establishing and maintaining collaboration.

Résumé. Collaboration multidisciplinaire, interdisciplinaire et transdisci-

plinaire: implications pour la psychologie vocationnelle. La littérature sur
l’interdisciplinarité identifie plusieurs formes de collaboration: multidisciplinaire,
transdisciplinaire et interdisciplinaire (comme discipline-pont ou intégrative). Pour
aider la psychologie vocationnelle à transposer son discours interdisciplinaire dans
l’action, cet article utilise cette littérature pour identifier les avantages qu’elle peut
en attendre, les défis qui l’attendent et les conditions d’un transfert réussi. Il indique
qu’il faut décider de la forme de collaboration requise et considérer les aspects
cognitifs, sociaux, organisationnels et institutionnels des disciplines concernées par
la collaboration. Il met en évidence la signification des rapports interpersonnels
quand on établit et maintient une collaboration.

Zusammenfassung. Multidisziplinäre, interdisziplinäre und transdisziplinäre

Zusammenarbeit: Auswirkungen für die Berufspsychologie. Die Literatur
zur Interdisziplinarität unterscheidet mehrere Formen der Zusammenarbeit: Multi-
disziplinär, transdisziplinär und interdisziplinär (im Sinne von Brücken bauend oder
integrierend). Um die Berufspsychologie darin zu unterstützen, den interdisziplinären

A. Collin (&)
De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester, LE1 9BH, UK
e-mail: acollin@dmu.ac.uk

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Diskurs zu konkretem Handeln weiterzuentwickeln, verwendet dieser Artikel diese

Literatur, um die Vorteile, die Herausforderungen und die Voraussetzungen für
einen Erfolg zu identifizieren. Es wird darauf hingewiesen, dass die Form der
erforderlichen Zusammenarbeit festgelegt werden muss, und dass die kognitiven,
sozialen, organisatorischen und institutionellen Aspekte der zusammenarbeitenden
Disziplinen bedacht werden müssen. Es wird die Bedeutung interpersoneller
Beziehungen für die Einleitung und Durchführung jeder Zusammenarbeit
herausgestellt.

Resumen. Colaboración multidisciplinar, interdisciplinar y transdisciplinar:

Implicaciones para la Psicologı́a Vocacional. En la literatura sobre la interdisci-
plinariedad se identifican varias formas de colaboración: multidisciplinar, trand-
isciplinar e interdisciplinar (en el sentido de integración o creación de puentes). Para
ayudar a la Psicologı́a Vocacional a traducir su discurso interdisciplinar a la acción,
en este artı́culo se utiliza esa literatura para señalar los beneficios, retos y condic-
iones para el éxito. Se indica que debe decidirse la forma de colaboración y
considerarse los aspectos cognitivos, sociales, organizativos e institucionales de las
disciplinas colaboradoras. Se destaca la importancia de las relaciones interpersonales
a la hora de establecer y mantener la colaboración.

Keywords Interdisciplinarity
Vocational psychology
Definitions

The value of—indeed, the need for—interdisciplinary collaboration is now firmly

established in many disciplines. It has come about with the growing specialisation,
formalisation, and professionalisation of the various branches of knowledge, or
disciplines. As knowledge has become more detailed in response to an increasingly
complex world, the ideals of a unified science—the synthesis and integration of
knowledge—espoused by Plato onwards (see Klein, 1990) have become under-
mined. The ‘‘inexorable logic that the real problems of society do not come in
discipline-shaped blocks’’ (Kann, in Klein, 1990, p. 35) has generated the
‘‘paradox’’ of the need for, yet inadequacies of, disciplines (Klein, 1990). This,
Klein says, leads to questions about the balance between specialisation and
integration, arbitrary or abstract divisions and organic, holistic real-life problems,
analysis and synthesis. Issues are now arising that are either of greater complexity
and breadth than can be comprehended by one discipline alone, or of interest to
more than one discipline. There are, moreover, debates about the construction of
knowledge and the socially constructed boundaries within it (Lattuca, 2003). Hence
over the last thirty years or so a considerable body of literature on the value of
collaboration between disciplines in scholarship, research, teaching, and profes-
sional practice has built up.
This discourse is now also being articulated in vocational psychology: we can
perhaps speak of the interdisciplinary turn in our field. Nevertheless, vocational
psychology has not engaged systematically in interdisciplinarity. Although this has
long been regretted in the field, those regrets have not yet led to action (see Collin,
2009). This symposium presents the opportunity to move forward, and this paper

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aims to contribute to that by using the experience of other disciplines to explore

what interdisciplinary collaboration means and what it could offer ours.

Defining various forms of collaboration between disciplines

The three forms of collaboration between disciplines most frequently mentioned in

the literature (e.g. Klein, 1990; Lattuca, 2003; Slatin, Galizzi, Melillo, Mawn, &
Phase In Healthcare Team, 2004) are multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and
transdisciplinarity, but the distinctions between them can be blurred and definitions
of them vary.
Multidisciplinarity has been defined as faculty from different disciplines working
independently on different aspects of a project (Mallon & Burnton, 2005), ‘‘in
parallel or sequentially’’ (Slatin et al., 2004, p. 62), but staying within their
disciplinary boundaries (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of
Canada, n.d.).
There are several definitions of transdisciplinarity. For Slatin and colleagues (2004,
p. 62), it is members of different disciplines using ‘‘a shared conceptual framework,
drawing together discipline-specific theories, concepts, and approaches to address a
common problem’’. For Lattuca (2003) it takes place in the use of an overarching
synthesis of theories, concepts, or methods that transcends disciplines and can be
applied to many fields. For her, the disciplines are not contributors to this synthesis but
provide settings in which to test it (Lattuca, 2003). In contrast, Arthur, Hall, and
Lawrence (1989) refer to transdisciplinarity in terms of work grounded in one
discipline acknowledging other viewpoints, reinterpreting its findings in terms of the
views of another, and acknowledging the different assumptions of other viewpoints.
Although Lattuca (2003, p. 5) reports that in ‘‘[m]ost definitions’’ it is the
integration of the participating disciplines that is ‘‘the litmus test’’ for interdisci-
plinarity, she is aware from other writers and from the grounded definitions in her own
research that there are ‘‘different, even competing’’ (p. 2) types of interdisciplinary
interaction which
may range from simple communication of ideas to the mutual integration of
organising concepts, methodology, procedures, epistemology, terminology,
data, and organisation of research and education in a fairly large field. … a
common effort on a common problem with continuous intercommunication.
(Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1972, in Lattuca,
2003, p. 2)
The following exemplify this range of definitions of interdisciplinarity: it is
members from different disciplines working together on the same project (Mallon &
Burnton, 2005); analysing, synthesising and harmonising links between them into a
coordinated and coherent whole (Canadian Institutes of Health Research, 2005); and
working ‘‘to either unify two or more disciplines or to create a new ‘interdisci-
plinary’ (hybrid) discipline at the interface of the mother disciplines’’ (Schummer,
2004, p. 11). Thus, according to Klein (1990), even within the thriving discourse of
interdisciplinarity, the term remains ‘‘ambiguous’’. She reports how sometimes the

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term ‘‘integrative’’ is used to convey the restructuring involved in unifying

disciplines, leaving ‘‘interdisciplinary’’ to denote bridge building in which
disciplinary identities are preserved. Just as multidisciplinarity might eventually
develop into interdisciplinarity, so also bridge building might evolve into
restructuring.
Schummer (2004) adds a further dimension to the consideration of interdisci-
plinarity with his observation that a discipline has both cognitive and social aspects.
The cognitive is the body of knowledge, the concepts and beliefs, the methods for
increasing and securing knowledge, and values used to judge its quality and
importance. The social is a body that has rules and means for increasing,
communicating and teaching that knowledge as a means of reproducing itself. In
interdisciplinary working, as Schummer defines it, the collaborating disciplines
have to integrate their cognitive and social aspects. There will be an overlap in the
common knowledge base (knowledge, methods, values) which can be increased
further (the cognitive aspect), and (the social) new infrastructures that develop to
enable the integrating disciplines to communicate, and to collaborate in research,
publication, and teaching; in the metaphysical notions rooted in their history, and in
their visions for the future. In looking beyond Schummer’s integrative interdisci-
plinarity, as this paper does, it can be recognised that multidisciplinarity,
transdisciplinarity, and bridge-building interdisciplinarity also have cognitive and
social aspects. Moreover, as can be inferred in the examples of ‘‘interdisciplinary’’
working examined later, the definition of ‘‘social’’ needs to be broadened explicitly
to include interpersonal, social and organizational relationships.

Interdisciplinarity in vocational psychology

Arthur and colleagues (1989) point out that the concept of career has currency not
only in psychology, social psychology, and sociology, but also in other disciplines
such as anthropology, economics, political science, history, and geography. They all
have an interest in studying career but have not been brought together to do so.
Vocational psychologists also recognise that their discipline is located at the
intersection of psychology and the disciplines of sociology, economics, education,
industrial relations, and human resource management (Hesketh, 2001). Thus as well
as their long familiarity with other sub-disciplines of psychology—social, counsel-
ling, cognitive, industrial and organizational (Savickas & Baker, 2005)—they are in
a position to be aware of other disciplinary approaches. They are already, to a
degree (see Young & Collin, 2004), open to some ideas from feminism,
postmodernism, the humanities, the biological sciences (systems theory), and the
‘‘new sciences’’ such as chaos theory. For over thirty years they have, indeed, been
calling for interdisciplinarity (Herr, 1990; Khapova, Arthur, & Wilderom, 2007; see
also Collin, 2009). Although they have left that term undefined, it seems that they
are using it loosely to denote either its bridge-building, non-integrative form or
multidisciplinarity. Multidisciplinarity (e.g., Collin & Young, 2000) and transdis-
ciplinarity (Arthur et al., 1989) have also been recommended. However, as the
continuing calls indicate, they have not yet effectively embraced it.

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Echoing the concern about increasing splits in the body of knowledge that
motivated the move towards interdisciplinarity elsewhere, the recent spate of calls
has been expressed in terms of remedying the present ills of vocational psychology
(see Savickas, 2001a). These include the need to address its split into ‘‘two camps’’
(Savickas & Baker, 2005, p. 43), one within counselling psychology, and the other
within industrial and organizational psychology, which has ‘‘dampened’’ it and led
to its ‘‘torpor’’. It now needs to re-invigorate itself by ‘‘cut[ting] across these
arbitrary subdisciplinary boundaries to reform itself into a cohesive whole and then
to move to collaborate on interdisciplinary projects’’ (Savickas & Baker, 2005,
p. 45). Interdisciplinarity also offers a way of dealing with complex real-life
problems that are not coterminous with disciplinary boundaries, and so could help
address another split, that between theory and practice, which has been a sore issue
for this field for a long time (Savickas & Walsh, 1996).
With this interest in interdisciplinarity in vocational psychology now, and the
possibility of engaging in it, it is important to be aware of what it would entail and,
to find that out, this paper will now turn to the experiences of other disciplines.

Issues in interdisciplinary collaboration

To identify some of the issues encountered in interdisciplinary research two sources

in particular, representing the two extremes of the definitions of ‘‘interdisciplinary’’,
have been drawn upon.
The paper by Slatin and colleagues (2004, p. 60) results from the close
examination of their experiences of working together that the team members made
at the end of the first year of their ongoing project. It describes ‘‘the promises and
pitfalls’’ and ‘‘effective strategies that emerged’’ in carrying out research on ‘‘Health
Disparities among Health Care Workers’’ which was interdisciplinary in the sense
that the team members worked jointly on a common problem but from their
discipline-specific base. At its start their project involved the disciplines of biology
and nutrition, biostatistics, community psychology, economics, epidemiology,
ergonomics, health education, health policy, health care administration, industrial
hygiene, industrial policy, medicine, nursing, political science, public health,
sociology, women’s studies, and work environment policy.
Intended as a guide to interdisciplinary collaboration, which is defined as the
‘‘deliberate integration of research questions, methods and skills from across
disciplines to answer a complex problem and to build new knowledge’’ (University
of Birmingham’s Research and Commercial Services, 2007a), the University of
Birmingham’s Research and Commercial Services has published information about
its Research and Enterprise Services on two Web sites (2007a, b). It complements
Slatin et al. (2004), and ranges over a number of projects but gives only key
information about them. The first Web site (2007a) enumerates in bullet-point style
what interdisciplinary research is (including conditions for success and benefits) and
‘‘Top Tips’’ on how to make it happen. The second (University of Birmingham’s
Research and Commercial Services, 2007b) gives brief synopses of examples of
such research, noting their funding, timescale, and success in terms of

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interdisciplinarity, and their particular ‘‘Top Tips’’. These examples include such
collaborations as those between the cuneiform studies, data compression and
delivery, forensic handwriting analysis disciplines on the ‘‘Cuneiform Digital
Palaeography’’ project; between education, applied social studies, economics, and
nursing on the ‘‘National Evaluation of the Children’s Fund’’ project; and between
chemistry, materials science, and physics on the ‘‘Physical Characterisation of
Molecular and Extended Inorganic Solids’’ project.
Although one of these sources is from the USA (Slatin et al., 2004) and the other
from the UK, and between them they cover collaborations between a wide range of
disciplines, they nevertheless report very similar issues in carrying out interdisci-
plinary research. It is worth noting that in many instances the collaboration was
between academics and professionals/practitioners. This suggests that their expe-
riences of interdisciplinarity could be relevant to other disciplines too, so this paper
will continue by first identifying some of the salient points they make and then
suggesting some implications for vocational psychology. It will be seen that some of
these issues concern primarily the cognitive and others the social aspects of a
discipline which, as referred to earlier, include interpersonal, social and organiza-
tional issues.

Some benefits of interdisciplinary interaction

Apart from intellectual stimulation and creativity, the benefits include the ability to
address complex problems that transcend disciplinary knowledge, and to generate
outputs that both make a difference to these problems and are valued in academia,
industry, and professional practice; opportunities to combine research questions
driven by different disciplinary interests and apply one’s discipline to an issue not
ordinarily considered, and to learn and combine new research techniques and
methodologies.
There are also beneficial side-effects such as the development of important skills
for individuals at all career stages, and the improvement of employment
opportunities for postgraduates and postgraduate research assistants. Moreover,
interdisciplinary working increases networking opportunities for those involved and
expands available funding sources, because some funding bodies favour interdis-
ciplinary research.

The challenges of interdisciplinary interaction and the conditions necessary

for its success

Slatin and colleagues (2004) identify the challenges to be faced in carrying out
interdisciplinary research and emphasise the need for supportive structures while the
University of Birmingham’s Research and Commercial Services (2007a) raise more
or less the same issues but expressed in terms of how to make interdisciplinarity
happen and the conditions necessary for success. Again it can be seen that some
issues concern the cognitive aspects of the projects, and it is these, perhaps, that
could most easily be anticipated; the significance of some of the interpersonal,
social and organizational issues emerged during implementation.

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Disciplinary collaborators have to address the basic differences between

themselves in terms of concepts, research questions, their perspectives upon those
questions, their epistemology, methods, skills, language, and culture. They need to
agree upon the objectives of their project, negotiate its boundaries, and develop
protocols and communication tools and systems. They must eliminate jargon and
use clear language that will be understood by all, and ensure extensive
communication at all stages of the project. They need supportive organizational
structures, adequate administrative resources, recognition of the time-consuming
nature of the planning, design, and carrying-out of interdisciplinary collaboration,
and adequate time built in for essentials such as team and sub-team meetings,
training, monitoring, etc. They must all be committed to interdisciplinarity,
establish and nurture commitment to the project throughout its life, and mutual trust
and respect among themselves. Importantly, attention must be paid to relationships,
to the choice of project leader and allocation of team roles.
Slatin and colleagues (2004) also contextualise the undertaking of an interdis-
ciplinary project within the disciplines and academic institutions involved, and the
careers of the project team members. For example, they recognise the needs of the
various stakeholders in research (the policy-makers, employers, funders, sponsors,
team members, clients, and research respondents) in the light of the lengthy process
of undertaking collaborative work and the negotiation of intellectual property rights.
They point to the need to establish the audience for interdisciplinary research and to
develop a publication strategy. They raise the issue of the possible compromise of
tenure, promotions and career by the inevitably slower progress of interdisciplinary
research, the selection of publications and conferences for the dissemination of
results, as well as the differing disciplinary conventions on order of authorship, and
lead authorship.

Implications for vocational psychology

This paper has noted that, although vocational psychology has espoused the
discourse of interdisciplinarity, it has done little to put words into action. However,
before taking that step there must be agreement on what it means and on what
terminology to use: these simplified versions of the definitions discussed earlier
would clarify thinking. With multidisciplinarity, members of several disciplines
work independently on the same problem, while with interdisciplinarity they work
jointly on it. In the former, the differences between their disciplines’ underlying
assumptions are not necessarily significant, but they are with the latter. It must be
made clear whether interdisciplinary working is aimed at bridge building or at
restructuring and integration in such a way that a new, hybrid, discipline might
develop. With transdisciplinarity, theories, concepts, and approaches, such as
systems theory or chaos theory, from one or more disciplines are used as an
overarching conceptual framework to address a problem.
There also needs to be more discussion on why vocational psychology should
engage in multi-, inter-, and/or transdisciplinary collaboration, and whether in
isolated cases or regularly. The outcome might be to expand vocational

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psychology’s scope and change its remit in a turbulent world in which its usual
constructs, theories and practices might no longer be effective, but this would nudge
it away from its comfort zone on to an unknown path. This needs careful
consideration. What would it gain, and what could it contribute? Would the benefits
outweigh the costs incurred in meeting the kinds of challenges that have been noted
here?
There are innumerable topics that could effectively be studied collaboratively,
some involving both academics and practitioners. Given the effort that is going to be
required, it makes sense to select those that would have strategic value, for example
those considered to be needed for the future of vocational psychology. For example,
Fouad (2001, p. 189) ‘‘dreams’’ of ‘‘[a]n interdisciplinary team of vocational
psychologists, sociologists, economists, and anthropologists [that] will test newly
developed theoretical constructs to explain contextual factors in vocational
behavior’’. To carry out one of the research programmes she envisages, on the
career path for older workers, further disciplines, among them human resource
management, demography, gerontology, health care and safety specialties, and
ergonomics, could also contribute. Others, too, would be useful in studying
‘‘occupational and lifestyle information’’ and ‘‘work environments’’, which are two
of the items on Savickas’s (2001b, p. 286) ‘‘agenda of important topics’’.
Two issues of the day have already been the subject of multidisciplinary
symposia funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council—careers and
family-friendly policies (2003–2005) and career and migration (starting in 2008);
one paper in the former argued for the transdisciplinary use of systems theory
(Collin, 2006). Research on these would be enriched by collaboration between
(some of) many other disciplines apart from those mentioned by Fouad (2001): for
example, labour economics, human resource management, industrial relations,
social policy, politics, law, family theory, demography, health sciences, history, and
more.
The possibility of such collaboration, of course, depends in part upon whether
other disciplines are interested in the same topic and form of collaboration, and their
calculation of what they would gain and could contribute, whether the benefits
would outweigh the costs to them. Their calculation might be very different from
that of vocational psychology. However, if they invited it to participate, its key
concepts, such as interests, values, decision-making, and development, and both its
traditional and innovative research methods (see Collin & Patton, 2009), would
make unique and valuable contributions.
Whatever form this collaboration takes, participants would have to take account
of the cognitive and social aspects of their disciplines. The details of these, the
concepts, methods, infrastructural and publishing arrangements, etc., as identified in
the discussion of other disciplines’ experiences above, need not be worked through
here. Instead, this short paper will conclude by considering how collaboration might
be set in motion.
Whether the process is initiated by vocational psychologists or those from other
disciplines, each has to know of the other’s interests, strengths and limitations.
Initial awareness might come via published work and conference papers although,
as Herr (1990) points out, each discipline tends to have its own journals and

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conferences. The possibility for interaction is more likely to arise from interpersonal
contacts, relationships and networks, a point that emerges in the discussions on how
to achieve a dialogue between the vocational psychological and organizational
perspectives on career (Collin & Patton, 2009).
Vocational psychologists need to approach this strategically, perhaps starting by
developing informal and formal multidisciplinary relationships in their own
institutions (via invitations to and attendance at in-house seminars, etc.). They
could then snow-ball those contacts outwards to other institutions and disciplines.
They must find ways to market what they have to offer to other disciplines, perhaps
by mounting a multidisciplinary conference or offering papers to the conferences of
other disciplines.
When potential collaborators have been found, agreement reached on the
cognitive and organizational aspects of the collaboration, as identified earlier, the
quality of interpersonal relationships will again become significant in the key issues
of communications, trust and relationships; and in language and cultural differences
between the participants. Thus it might prove that not only are the social and
interpersonal aspects of collaboration as significant to its success as the cognitive,
but possibly more challenging to get right.

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