Transdisciplinary View Research Articles

Pluralismo metodológico e transdisciplinaridade na complexidade: uma reflexão para a administração

Uma visão transdisciplinar da área significa buscar novas posturas epistemológicas e metodológicas que não sejam apenas justaposição de ideias e métodos, mas sim uma tentativa na busca de insights e abordagens múltiplas que possam dar conta da essência dos fenômenos da área, que de alguma maneira estão conectados com o universo amplo das ciências sociais nos seus diferentes domínios e corpo multidisciplinar. Este artigo busca, no enfoque da complexidade, fundamentação para o desenvolvimento de um pluralismo metodológico sustentado pela transdisciplinaridade, e desenvolve um questionamento às racionalidades dominantes, que, de alguma maneira, têm servido de referências teóricas e epistemológicas para justificativa de uma administração onde não há espaço para emancipação e criatividade. O artigo desenvolve novas perspectivas epistemológicas que podem significar análises mais adequadas e fecundas dos fenômenos individuais e coletivos que caracterizam o universo das organizações, nos seus conflitos, nas suas contradições e na sua própria razão de ser e na da sociedade.

The Transdisciplinary Model of Evaluation

The transdisciplinary view, or model, of evaluation requires an understanding of how and why evaluation developed from a practice to a highly skilled, professional practice to a field-specific discipline, and finally to an autonomous discipline and transdiscipline, much like ethics, statistics, and measurement (Scriven, 2003). This understanding becomes known from the transdisciplinary model’s three primary characteristics that make it a transdiscipline, which are: epistemological;political; and disciplinary (Scriven, 1993).

The necessity of trans‐scientific frameworks for doing interdisciplinary research

PurposeThe purpose of this theoretical research paper in philosophy and theory of science is to argue for the necessity of developing transdisciplinary frameworks in order to be able to interact in an interdisciplinary fashion.Design/methodology/approachReflects on interdisciplinarity and the prerequisites of doing scientific and scholarly research and develops a non‐reductionistic and transdisciplinary view on human knowing in the light of the growing development of interdisciplinary practices and sciences.FindingsIt is argued that there is at present an incompatibility between scientific and phenomenological approaches to cognition and communication. A broader framework is, therefore, needed to encompass both, if one wants to make coherent theories and models in this subject area. The work, therefore, focuses on the relation between information science and semiotics and creates a framework for the analysis of both meaning and truth.Research limitations/implicationsThe framework is very abstract here in the description. It has to be developed in detail and its effect demonstrated in practical examples.Practical implicationsThey have to be judged both on how well their descriptions fit better than others with what actually goes on in the sciences and humanities and on their usefulness to function as a common map coordinating interdisciplinary work.Originality/valueA trans‐scientific framework, which is suggested as a basis for the sciences and humanities to understand themselves in relation to other kinds of knowledge such as philosophy, art, religion, political ideology, etc. New also are the visual structural models.

Proprietary versus internet technologies and the adoption and impact of electronic marketplaces

In this paper we provide a trans-disciplinary view on electronic markets and their impact beyond the dyadic use of EDI. Electronic marketplaces and business-to-business (B2B) exchanges are proliferating now that the Internet has made cooperation and collaboration easier and cheaper. The key question addressed is: will these newer forms of electronic markets lead to other mechanisms of integration and governance than the old EDI-based e-markets and Inter-organisational systems? We argue that the characteristics of pre-internet electronic marketplaces structurally differ from those of internet-based electronic marketplaces, and that this results in different adoption and integration patterns. We provide a model and a set of integrative propositions.

Change as Crisis or Growth? Toward a Trans-disciplinary View of Information Systems as a Field of Study: A Response to Benbasat and Zmud's Call for Returning to the IT Artifact

Benbasat and Zmud (2003) express concern that the research community in Information Systems is responsible for the ambiguity of the discipline's central identity by "underinvestigating phenomena intimately associated with IT-based systems and overestimating phenomena distantly associated with IT-based systems"(p.183). Their related argument is that IS needs to focus on the core of the discipline to survive. I seriously contend this point of view. Questioning that we are at a crossroads in the Information Systems (IS) field, I argue that the field should become less disciplinary, and more trans-disciplinary in nature. I build my case by focusing on - and then questioning - underpinnings in their argument. These include: (1) their definitions of IS as a field; (2) the locus of our field in organizations; (3) the assumption that IS is a discipline; and (4) the lack of consideration given to the inter- and trans-national nature of IS as a field of study. Thus, the paper attempts to reposition Information Systems (IS) as quintessentially trans-disciplinary in nature. This case develops by considering how fields of study evolve over time. This evolution can be seen as either natural or as producing crisis. Next, I offer an alternative "core" to Benbasat's and Zmud's "IT artifact." Following this, I present an appropriate locus of study for IS, one that offers a less constricting boundary than that of the organization, including societal and cross-cultural considerations. Finally, I question the very notion of "discipline" as applied to IS, and identify implications for the IS academy.

Caring science and the science of unitary human beings: a trans-theoretical discourse for nursing knowledge development.

Two dominant discourses in contemporary nursing theory and knowledge development have evolved over the past few decades, in part by unitary science views and caring theories. Rogers' science of unitary human beings (SUHB) represents the unitary directions in nursing. Caring theories and related caring science (CS) scholarship represent the other. These two contemporary initiatives have generated two parallel, often controversial, seemingly separate and unrelated, trees of knowledge for nursing science. This paper explores the evolution of CS and its intersection with SUHB that have emerged in contemporary nursing literature. We present a case for integration, convergence, and creative synthesis of CS with SUHB. A trans-theoretical, trans-disciplinary context emerges, allowing nursing to sustain its caring ethic and ontology, within a unitary science. The authors critique and review the seminal, critical issues that have separated contemporary knowledge developments in CS and SUHB. Foundational issues of CS, and Watson's theory of transpersonal caring science (TCS), as a specific exemplar, are analysed, alongside parallel themes in SUHB. By examining hidden ethical-ontological and paradigmatic commonalities, trans-theoretical themes and connections are explored and revealed between TCS and SUHB. Through a creative synthesis of TCS and SUHB we explicate a distinct unitary view of human with a relational caring ontology and ethic that informs nursing as well as other sciences. The result: is a trans-theoretical, trans-disciplinary view for nursing knowledge development. Nursing's history has been to examine theoretical differences rather than commonalities. This trans-theoretical position moves nursing toward theoretical integration and creative synthesis, vs. separation, away from the 'Balkanization' of different theories. This initiative still maintains the integrity of different theories, while facilitating and inviting a new discourse for nursing science. The result: Unitary Caring Science that evokes both science and spirit.

Trans-scientific frameworks of knowing: complementarity views of the different types of human knowledge

The paper attempts to develop a non-reductionistic and transdisciplinary view on human knowing in the light of the growing development of transdisciplinary practices and sciences. Medicine is one of the oldest; ecology and information science are some of the newer examples of radical transdisciplinarity. I discuss the lack of a recognized place and value of phenomenological knowledge in relation to the general mechanistic scientific ontology that still seems to be the only generally accepted background for the transdisciplinary areas to build on. Ontologically we cannot say much about reality except that it is very complex and dynamic, but still has structures and causal relations of a certain stability, which can be modelled mathematically. We further have to admit that there are aspects of reality that are beyond measuring. I suggest that the dualistic idea of transcendental and eternal mathematical natural laws and an algorithmic programme behind intelligence and language is rejected for its lack of ability to include the phenomenological and existential perspective of science and the practical knowledge beyond words. Instead I am promoting an epistemology, which sees science as only one aspect of our knowledge and sees human knowledge as going beyond language. An opening for the phenomenological aspect is then created in our modern scientistic and mechanistic metaphysics. I suggest a view of knowledge seen as self-organized signification systems based on metaphysical frameworks in social practice. The interpretation of sign in a systematized knowledge framework is actually where the medical sciences started in the classical Greek tradition of Hippocrates. This non-reductionistic framework promises to open towards a non-Cartesian transdisciplinary understanding of the basis for the generation and communication of knowledge in society without giving up what we have gained through the rigour and the methods of the sciences and the logic of philosophical analysis. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The World of Roman Costume

Greeks and Romans felt that nationality could be identified by dress as well as by language. Examining the ways the women and men of antiquity presented themselves through their dress provides valuable insight into their social institutions; concepts of rank, gender, and status; cultural symbols; role playing; and self-identification. These concerns shape The World of Roman Costume, an extensive investigation of Roman dress, following the pioneering studies of the the 1920s and 1930s by Lillian Wilson. These essays combine the expertise of archaeologists, philologists, anthropologists, and historians. Together they form a transdisciplinary view of the functional and symbolic values of costuming within Roman society and other societies where Roman influence was pervasive. Because habits of dress were determined by, and hence are expressions of, the traditional roles and everyday activities assumed by the Romans, these essays aim to provide a valuable resource for historians of culture, the arts, and religion.

Implications for popular evaluation approaches

AbstractThe set of theses listed here addresses the consequences of the transdisciplinary view for popular views of program evaluation.