Interdisciplinary research is the key

The organizational sciences are rapidly coming together with neuroscience theory and methods to provide new insights into organizational phenomena (Becker et al., 2011; Senior et al., 2011; Lee et al., 2012), and even the potential development of individuals within organizations (Waldman et al., 2011). A number of challenges become relevant in the pursuit of such an amalgamation, but perhaps the most apparent is the inherent need for interdisciplinary perspectives and research. An overall purpose of this opinion piece is to clarify the importance of interdisciplinary efforts, while at the same time clarifying the challenges to be faced if we are to apply neuroscience to organizations. Scientists are typically trained and reinforced to work in a unidisciplinary, specialized mode. It really does not matter if we are considering people trained in the so-called “soft” sciences (e.g., psychology), or whether they come from the “hard” sciences (e.g., neuroscience). We are largely groomed and later reinforced to be specialists. I personally was trained in industrial/organizational psychology, a specialized area of the broader field of psychology. When I was undergoing my graduate education, as well as in the years that followed, I never dreamed that I would someday be working with neuroscientists. But it is now happening. In other words, I am conducting interdisciplinary research involving neuroscientists. In so doing, I certainly do not represent the norm among my colleagues. I say this as a professor in a management department of business school. I realize that for many academic psychologists working in psychology departments, the notion of combining psychology and neuroscience has become the norm. Accordingly, much of what I will address in this opinion piece would not apply to them. I will address three primary questions in this article. First, what are the institutional and personal impediments that may prevent researchers, especially those in settings such as my own, from engaging in the type of interdisciplinary research that might involve neuroscience? Second, what is the myth vs. reality of the obstacles that might preclude the success of interdisciplinary efforts? Third, what steps can we take to engage in more interdisciplinary research? By addressing these questions, I hope to provide some insight into the issues and benefits of an interdisciplinary approach to neuroscience research. Most of my approach is framed through the perspective of an organizational researcher such as myself, although I conclude with some consideration of why neuroscientists might want to pursue interdisciplinary research that reaches out to the organizational sciences.