Building bridges: Institutional perspectives on interdisciplinarity

There have been a number of contributions to this journal (Futures) that discuss interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity (see our reference list), several of which refer to the institutional character of academic disciplines. The exact nature of this institutional character, however, is generally not discussed in great detail. Our contribution draws on W. Richard Scott's synthetic reconstruction of the many approaches to institutional analysis, aiming to elucidate what an institutional perspective on interdisciplinarity would entail.Without knowledge from several academic disciplines, important problems in contemporary society cannot be solved. Consequently, the quest for interdisciplinary is gaining support among many scientists and funding agencies. In this article, we argue that even if we can understand the ambitions of interdisciplinarity, we also need to be aware of the barriers involved. Interdisciplinary approaches to framing and solving problems will almost inevitably stumble into barriers that are of a structural, cultural and a cognitive nature and problems related to disciplines as social institutions. The question to be discussed is if and how these barriers can be overcome. We claim that it is the structural barriers that are the easiest ones to address, whereas the cultural barriers are more difficult to overcome because they require more than a regulatory fix.