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| L to R; Back row: Scott Cassidy, Patricia Grabarek, Shin-I Shih, Lily Cushenbery, Christian Thoroughgood; Front row: Amie Skattebo, Katina Sawyer, Rachel Hoult, Joshua Fairchild |
TIP-TOPics: Practicing Interdisciplinarity: The Benefits of Bridging Gaps Within the University and Beyond
Katina Brynn Sawyer
Pennsylvannia State University
As graduate students in I-O psychology, we often ask ourselves what we have to offer to practitioners, to our universities, to our colleagues, and to the world at large. Although we know that each of us possesses a special set of skills, we often struggle with how to communicate the value of these skills to others. Thus, in this issue’s Tip-Topics, I propose that one of the best ways for us, as I-O psychologists, to spread our knowledge to others is through effective cross-disciplinary collaboration.
As a dual-degree PhD student in both I-O psychology and women’s studies, I have ample experience working across disciplines. This program requires me to complete core coursework in both departments and to complete a thesis and a dissertation that combine literature from both disciplines in order to make a substantive contribution to both fields. Although I-O and women’s studies are often incongruous, each discipline offers much in the way of informing the other on important topics that are relevant to both. So, I have put great effort into discovering ways in which I-O can inform women’s studies and vice versa. Although I find my particular dual degree to be very fulfilling (and I urge others to engage in I-O-women’s studies collaborations), I think that my experiences can generalize to almost any cross-disciplinary coursework or research. Thus, although I will be using examples from my personal experience, it is my hope that this column encourages cross-disciplinary work for graduate students across the board, no matter where their particular interests might lie.
One reason I strongly recommend cross-disciplinary work is that it forces us to translate what we do in the field of I-O (and why we do it) into plain English. People are often surprised to learn that my career goals include applied work. Why have a dual degree (especially in a nonempirical, theory-laden field such as women’s studies) if my goal is to become a consultant? For me, there are multitude ways in which future applied practitioners can benefit from cross-disciplinary work. When potential employers ask me why I feel that a dual degree is valuable, I point out that consultants are constantly being asked to explain complex research designs to clients who are unfamiliar with our methods. As such, successful translation is a crucial component of being an effective consultant. If a client doesn’t know what you’re selling, chances are they aren’t buying. Therefore, in order to be effective, we also have to be honest with ourselves. We use a TON of esoteric jargon. It’s not by any fault of our own but rather a byproduct of the fact that we are constantly surrounded by scholars with similar interests. Cross-disciplinary coursework gives excellent practice in translation because there are many cases in which you are the only person in the room who understands what I-O psychology is and why it is valuable. For example, in my first women’s studies course, I was giving a presentation about a lab study I had designed to measure gender bias in promotion decisions. Following the presentation, a fellow student raised her hand and asked, “I understand everything, except for the part about the confederates.” Realizing that she thought I was talking about history, I was able to go back to the drawing board. As a new consultant dealing with a client, however, I may not have had a second chance to explain myself. Through my cross-disciplinary coursework and research, I have had the opportunity to see the need for and practice my ability to translate what an I-O psychologist does and how it gets done. This opportunity has been personally rewarding and has resulted in a general awareness of when I’m expressing myself clearly and when I’m not—a simple, but surprisingly valuable skill. In my opinion, this skill is one that all graduate students should have practice with, and cross-disciplinary work is a great avenue for doing so.
In addition to improving our ability to communicate outside our field, cross-disciplinary work provides one with a greater appreciation for what scholars within and outside our field know. I have found many similarities between what we study as I-O psychologists and what others study in a variety of disciplines. Interestingly, for example, I-O psychologists have something in common with feminist geographers. I realized this during one of my interdisciplinary courses when a colleague explained that many geographers study the intersections of location and identity (e.g., where can a person safely “be” a mother, a woman, a homosexual, a poor person, or a person of mixed race, for example). To me, this question is not so different from asking, “How do my personal characteristics affect my ability to perform under particular circumstances?”, a question that we, as I-O psychologists, ask quite often. Our colleagues are constantly studying interesting and exciting things that can help to expand the impact and value of our own research. The best part of all is that this exciting work is happening right now, on our own campuses, in buildings surrounding our own. Even better, all of this up-and-coming research is right at our fingertips with just a quick search on our university’s library database. Finding the similarities between our field and the fields of our colleagues—that is, the threads that bind us to the common pursuit of one broader understanding—can be both refreshing and eye-opening, not to mention that it allows us to speak a multitude of “languages.” Being able to speak across disciplines will help us to communicate with a diverse group of colleagues across our universities, as well as among corporations, departments, and work teams.
Third, doing cross-disciplinary work allows us to meet interesting people whom we would not have met otherwise. In the past year, I served as a graduate officer in the Women’s Studies department along with four other women. Together, we represented the disciplines of psychology, history, German, curriculum and instruction, and sociology. As officers, one of our duties was to organize the annual women’s studies conference on Penn State’s campus. As time passed, it was interesting to take note of the specialized knowledge that we each had that enabled us to get the job done. As individuals, we knew a lot, but together we were able to accomplish more than we thought we could, similar to the idea of distributed knowledge (Mohammed & Dumville, 2001; Lewis, 2004). Even better, these women became some of my best friends. Not only have I met great students, but I have also gotten the opportunity to meet fantastic faculty, local activists, and members of other universities who share similar interests. Certainly creating a support network of colleagues (and friends) outside of your home department is beneficial, but, much more than that, it is genuinely enjoyable. Although I have been very fortunate to meet such inspiring people, I don’t think that my experience is unique. Every time we reach across boundaries, we break down barriers, increasing network ties and creating opportunities for other graduate students to follow in our footsteps.
Finally, doing cross-disciplinary work allows you to study the things that you are interested in while providing the opportunity to utilize new lenses with which to view the work you do. For example, I have been able to apply a feminist perspective in order to think “intersectionally,” that is, to examine the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality within my work. Although the statistical measurement of intersectionality presents many challenges (see Warner, 2008 for a best practices guide), I have been able to utilize this perspective in order to have a critical eye when reviewing I-O literature. In other words, the set of questions that I am able to ask about a particular piece of work has changed (for the better, I think). For instance, I like thinking about how findings might be different when participants are Black women as opposed to White women, or Asian homosexual men instead of Asian straight men, or whatever the case may be. These are questions that are, unfortunately, often sacrificed in I-O for higher sample sizes and more generalizable results and conclusions. Another question of interest is which jobs count as “work”; for example, do farming, weaving, or nannying count (see Schein, 2003 for an excellent perspective on this question)? We must remember that we, as I-O psychologists, study psychology in organizations, no matter whether they are traditional or nontraditional. To restrict our focus to the former is to restrict our understanding of organizations and limit our societal contribution as a field. More than anything, applying a feminist perspective to my work has allowed me to realize that we need to think seriously about who we are leaving out of our research and what “silenced” knowledge we may be missing out on because of it. Not only do I think that this is important for the purposes of conducting better research, but I also think that (in an increasingly global economy comprised of a diverse workforce) these findings are of great importance for practitioners as well.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that working cross disciplinarily is always easy. Believe me it can be difficult fulfilling two sets of requirements, making both “sides” happy, and creating a cohesive argument that integrates two literatures that often conflict with one another. However, bridging gaps between areas of research by realizing how each discipline can inform the other can be extremely fruitful. Through this process, we can potentially create new knowledge. It is important to realize that graduate students in psychology are similar to graduate students in other disciplines in at least one major way. We all want to make a contribution to the world by advancing knowledge. We are all interested in finding out under what conditions our assumptions hold and under what conditions our assumptions fall apart. What better way to perform this exercise than by asking someone who has a different set of assumptions? If we as scholars are interested in finding some form of “truth,” then it behooves us to band together rather than embark on this difficult quest alone. As scientists, we know that our hypotheses must be testable, so let’s start putting our disciplinary assumptions to the test.
In conclusion, although I have used my dual degree with I-O and women’s studies as an example, I hope that this article points out the importance of working cross disciplinarily, no matter what discipline one chooses. Stepping out of the “I-O box” allows students to navigate uncharted waters, experience new things, and learn valuable and novel information, all of which helps to create well-rounded psychologists, regardless of whether they become academics or practitioners. Although it is important to work within our disciplinary boundaries and to be able to speak a common language with other I-O psychologists, it is also important that we are able to break down and transcend these barriers in order to learn from knowledgeable others about what they do and how they do it. So, sign up for a course outside of your area, join a cross-disciplinary research lab, or merely strike up a conversation with someone from a discipline you know nothing about. You’ll both learn something new, guaranteed.
Katina Sawyer (kbs175@psu.edu), a graduate of Villanova University, is approaching her 4th year at Penn State, working toward a dual PhD in I-O and women’s studies. She studies gender and diversity issues at work and at home, including household division of labor and work–family conflict.
References
Lewis, K. (2004). Knowledge and performance in knowledge-worker teams: A longitudinal study of transactive memory systems. Management Science, 50(11), 1519–1533.
Mohammed, S. & Dumville, B. C. (2001). Team mental models in a team knowledge framework: Expanding theory and measurement across disciplinary boundaries. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 22, 89–106.
Schein, V. E. (2003). The functions of work-related group participation for poor women in developing countries: An exploratory look. Psychology and Developing Societies. Special Issue: Women and Development, 15, 123–142.
Warner, L. R. (2008). A best practices guide to intersectional approaches in psychological research. Sex Roles, 59, 454–463.