Preparing interdisciplinary leadership for a sustainable future

Abstract

Urgent sustainability challenges require effective leadership for inter- and trans-disciplinary (ITD) institutions. Based on the diverse experiences of 20 ITD institutional leaders and specific case studies, this article distills key lessons learned from multiple pathways to building successful programs. The lessons reflect both the successes and failures our group has experienced, to suggest how to cultivate appropriate and effective leadership, and generate the resources necessary for leading ITD programs. We present two contrasting pathways toward ITD organizations: one is to establish a new organization and the other is to merge existing organizations. We illustrate how both benefit from a real-world focus, with multiple examples of trajectories of ITD organizations. Our diverse international experiences demonstrate ways to cultivate appropriate leadership qualities and skills, especially the ability to create and foster vision beyond the status quo; collaborative leadership and partnerships; shared culture; communications to multiple audiences; appropriate monitoring and evaluation; and perseverance. We identified five kinds of resources for success: (1) intellectual resources; (2) institutional policies; (3) financial resources; (4) physical infrastructure; and (5) governing boards. We provide illustrations based on our extensive experience in supporting success and learning from failure, and provide a framework that articulates the major facets of leadership in inter- and trans-disciplinary organizations: learning, supporting, sharing, and training.

Keywords: Interdisciplinary organization; Leadership; Lessons learned; Transdisciplinary.

Fig. 1

Two dimensions of integration involving scientific research. Scientific integration, represented on the vertical axis, moves from disciplinary focus, through inclusions of multiple disciplines in a study, to the integration of those multiple disciplines in question asking, methodology, conclusions, and application. The final step of scientific integration is defined by its linkage with societal and political needs. Transdisciplinarity requires that various kinds of participants or stakeholders, here signified by communities, decision makers, and formal authorities (shown here on the horizontal axis), must be involved in posing questions, aligning methods, and assessing outcomes. The move from disciplinary science through transdisciplinary scientific-social research and intervention has been defined by the US National Science Foundation as convergence science. Some scholars use the term convergence to refer to deep integration in the scientific sphere as well (e.g., Irwin et al. 2018)