Existing and Emerging Methods for Integrating Theories within and between Disciplines

Abstract

Our conceptual systems (including theories, models, policies, and schema) all help us to understand our world. For highly complex situations such as those found in natural systems and service systems, it is important to understand them from an interdisciplinary perspective because these real-world systems do not respect the boundaries of any single discipline. While many conceptual systems exist, they have not proven to be highly effective for understanding issues that are the focus of their disciplines. Still fewer conceptual systems have been developed that cut across disciplinary boundaries — and they have not been shown to be any more effective than their mono-disciplinary companions. This article investigates emerging and existing methods for creating and integrating theories within and between disciplines. This includes ‘soft’ methods (ad-hoc, cherry-picking, and intuitive) as well as ‘rigorous’ (formal grounded theory (FGT), reflexive dimensional analysis (RDA), and integrative propositional analysis (IPA)). The article demonstrates that soft methods are relatively easy to use, but they do not produce conceptual systems of great or lasting value. In contrast, it is proposed that rigorous methods are more likely to yield conceptual systems which are measurably more systemic, more useful, and more effective for understanding and engaging the highly complex systems of our world.