This study aims to explore the role of interdisciplinary research in doctoral education. While the benefits of incorporating interdisciplinarity into Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) programmes are well-documented, persistent concerns remain regarding the effective engagement of doctoral students in such approaches.
The authors conducted in-depth interviews with ten business PhD candidates from two research-intensive universities in Australia and Germany about their academic research learning and development.
The thematic analysis revealed interdisciplinarity as an important motivation and career driver for all our participants, irrespective of country. Interdisciplinarity is key to complex problem-solving allowing students to imagine diverse careers. By engaging with interdisciplinary ideas, students actively confront disciplinary barriers for the sake of their intellectual growth and careers and are motivated by the potential for achieving greater good for their community and society. While interdisciplinarity enhances doctoral students’ motivation and career horizons, however, its transformative potential is perceived to be hampered by traditional academic socialisation.
This study offers novel insights on PhD students’ perceptions of interdisciplinarity and its function in the researcher development trajectory. Furthermore, it extends the conversation on how PhD programmes need to evolve and better address students’ and societal needs.
Introduction
The business world has changed dramatically in the past decade. Geopolitical tensions, climate change and rapid technological advances create ongoing challenges. Government, industry and higher education can respond by developing skilled knowledge workers equipped to tackle complex problems, problems that require interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral approaches and collaborations to solve (Rashid, 2022; Mountford et al., 2020). The United Nations proclaim in the 2030 strategy (UN, 2015): “It is the only way to drive global sustainable development that delivers social inclusion, environmental sustainability and economic prosperity” and agencies like the National Science Foundation (2019) push for more interdisciplinary research. Where a single disciplinary approach fails to fully grasp a problem or find a sustainable solution, interdisciplinarity affords the power of diverse approaches and perspectives.
Though interdisciplinary research and education have proven their worth (Kovacic and Marcos-Valls, 2023; Michel and Förster, 2025), operational challenges persist as do contradicting views on interdisciplinary research. One view is that researchers from different disciplines generally have varying methods and approaches to research, which can make mutual understanding and collaboration difficult. Another is that interdisciplinary research requires more resources and funding than single-discipline research, risking organisational and institutional support (Trinh et al., 2022). Yet, others view interdisciplinary research as of lesser value and think it does not require deep theoretical knowledge in a particular area (Dupin, 2023; Muravska and Ozoliņa, 2011). Finally, organisational structures and traditional cultures in higher education including business education do not yet fully realise the benefits of interdisciplinarity (Trinh et al., 2022; Boden et al., 2011) or lead to clear career outcomes (Lawrence, 2024).
The first step of researcher development is arguably the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). PhD programmes around the globe is transforming in form and nature by moving towards shorter times to completion, expectations to teach and mentor (undergraduate or Master students), showing real-live application value, employability development, and increasingly, multidisciplinary and collaborative approaches in research and supervision (Lawrence, 2024; Balaban, 2020; Carvalho and Cardoso, 2020; Cardoso et al., 2022; Lyall and Meagher, 2012). The emergence of many successful interdisciplinary PhD schemes worldwide attests to this. For instance, the National Science Foundation funded an Integrative Graduate Education Research and Training (IGERT) in the US up until 2015 (Gardner et al., 2014; Boden et al., 2011), later extended by the Research Traineeship programme. The Interdisciplinary Studies Graduate Program (ISGP) at the University of British Columbia, is unique in Canada and possibly the largest interdisciplinary PhD programme in North America. The National University of Singapore offers a full-time four year Integrative Sciences and Engineering Program (ISEP) which admits students from multiple STEM disciplines (Rashid, 2021; Rashid, 2022). The Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience (IPN) at Georgetown University participated in a Carnegie supported study on professional development in doctoral education with positive outcomes in terms of students’ professional and skill development (Ullrich et al., 2014). In Europe, a doctoral summer school provides doctoral students with opportunities to connect Learning Sciences, Educational Psychology and Computer Science, to investigate interventions based on digital technologies in education and training settings (Pammer-Schindler et al., 2020). Interdisciplinary doctoral pathways now form recognised mechanisms for health professionals in the UK (Hayes and Corrie, 2022). Finally, in relation to business research training we see a proliferation of diverse doctoral models such as the Doctor of Business Administration, practice doctorates and executive PhDs, which highlight stronger interdisciplinary elements to meet the needs of institutions and business researchers alike (De Meyer, 2013).
However, interdisciplinary research does not only happen when framed as such, PhD students proactively engage with diverse research perspectives and literature, especially at the start of their journey when defining their questions and problem statements. Business research is inherently heterogeneous and commonly engages with complex real-world problems (authors removed for peer-review) positioning interdisciplinarity as both: enabling solutions and producing disciplinary tensions. This makes business doctoral education a particularly revealing site for investigating how PhD students perceive and enact interdisciplinarity.
Interdisciplinarity in doctoral education
There are various types of disciplinarities, e.g. crossdisciplinarity, multidisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. These are often – and falsely – used synonymously with interdisciplinarity. Interdisciplinarity, according to Stember (1991) means to integrate knowledge and methods from different disciplines, using a real synthesis of disciplinary approaches. Hence, by combining multiple disciplines, interdisciplinary research can leverage the unique strength of each field to discover novel insights and ideas that would not have been possible by approaching a problem from a single disciplinary perspective (Rashid, 2022; Dupin, 2023).
Several arguments and conceptual assumptions are made to support interdisciplinary research: intellectual, practical and pedagogical (Stember, 1991). The intellectual argument assumes that any idea in one field is enriched by theories, concepts, insights or methods from other fields or disciplines. Looking across the boundaries helps shift them and open the horizon of one’s thinking, especially when stuck. Stember also indicates that engagement in interdisciplinary research creates intellectual communities extending to staff and students, which creates a creative intellectual climate (Stember, 1991, p. 2).
The practical argument relates to the pragmatic acceptance that the world and its problems are not neatly divided into disciplinary fields. Furthermore, Stember (1991) claims that many exciting developments came about because disciplinary boundaries were crossed. This is how many more recent fields were born, e.g. neurosciences, genetic engineering and urban geography.
Finally, the pedagogical argument is based on the understanding that learning is not well supported if it’s fragmented. Holistic approaches to problem-solving benefit the solution development. For example, we see the acceptance of this premise in the ongoing attempts to provide more coherent and integrated curricula in undergraduate education, in which students have the chance to experience interdisciplinary thinking through project work, industry internships, work-integrated learning components or elective choices outside one’s specialisation (OECD, 2019).
Despite reservations regarding interdisciplinary research, it offers multiple benefits to research in general and especially doctoral education. Providing students with opportunities to engage with experts from diverse disciplines helps students become more creative and innovative thinkers (Holley, 2015). Furthermore, interdisciplinary researchers tend to be self-directed and independent (Gardner, 2012). Ivanitskaya et al. (2002) identified skills like humility, tolerance for ambiguity, flexible and creative thinking, higher order thinking ability, ability to synthesise and a general open-mindedness to be associated with interdisciplinary work. By uniting the strengths of multiple fields, researchers and students can gain new perspectives, detect further research gaps and develop more suitable solutions to global issues. This is an exciting and motivating proposition for doctoral students experiencing interdisciplinary research (Gardner et al., 2014).
Although interdisciplinary research and doctoral education are of the utmost importance for the advancement of knowledge and innovation, and the solving of today’s complex problems, there is limited research on interdisciplinarity in doctoral education, including impact on post-grad careers (Lawrence, 2024; Carr et al., 2018; Mountford et al., 2020). Gardner et al. (2014) investigated and compared the views and attitudes of doctoral students and supervisors towards interdisciplinarity and found that doctoral students and younger faculty members tended to be more open to learning about different disciplinary approaches than senior colleagues. Carr and colleagues (2018) discovered positive effects of interdisciplinary work experiences on building social and knowledge capital and learning processes. Hence, understanding students’ perspectives promises important insights into their researcher and academic socialisation.
In this paper, we share findings from a two-country research study that examined how students navigated doctoral training in relation to their research interests and employability. Our data analysis revealed interdisciplinarity as a key theme stimulating further investigation. Below, we explain our methodology guided by the question, how do PhD students perceive interdisciplinarity in their researcher development, and present the findings. Practical and theoretical implications are also discussed.
Methodology
This study is situated in a larger qualitative and comparative research project that explored how PhD candidates navigate and experience research and transferable skill learning throughout candidature (see Authors [names and year removed for peer review]). The project was conducted by two researchers who selected a convenience sample of business students to interview. Ten semi-structured interviews with business PhD candidates were conducted at two research intensive universities, one in Germany and one in Australia. Five interviews in Germany were conducted in German and approved German translations of the interview questionnaire were used. As both authors are German native speakers, quotes that were identified as relevant examples for this paper were translated into English and checked by both researchers for accuracy.
In Germany, PhD candidates are usually used by universities, taking on both research and some teaching over a longer and less structured four to six year period. In Australia, by contrast, they are mainly students working within a more structured, fixed three to four year timeframe. Because of this, German PhDs tend to feel more like regular employment, while Australian programmes are more structured, focusing on meeting formal milestones to facilitate a timely completion (Clarke and Lunt, 2014).
By gathering data from two different cultural and academic contexts, we sought to establish a more holistic picture regarding the complex issue of skill development in doctoral programmes. Participating students formed a diverse cohort at different stages of their candidature. Pseudonyms marked with an A were Australian students, namely A1_Oliver, A2_Isla, A3_Amilia, A4_Leo and A5_Akamu. Pseudonyms beginning with G came from Germany, namely, G1_Paul, G2_Mika, G3_Sophia, G4_Lutz and G5_Hannah. Recruitment took place via email announcement of the study via relevant HDR contacts, and participation was entirely voluntary. Ethics approval was obtained prior to recruitment.
The theme of interdisciplinarity firmly emerged as a focus of analysis early in the data analysis process which prompted us to investigate this theme in more depth. The below described process of thematic analysis focuses on this aspect of the research.
Thematic analysis refers to a method by which researchers identify patterns in text and report them as themes (Lochmiller, 2021). Schreier (2014) identifies the multiple approaches to thematic analysis which share common components and goals. To promote replicability of the analysis approach Schreier suggests following a toolbox type of approach structured in steps and questions for researchers to consider at each stage of the process depending on what is most meaningful in the researcher’s context. The advantage of this approach is that it maintains the rigorous systematic nature of thematic analysis while explicitly and transparently communicating each step of the way.
Our analytical approach was informed by the work of Schreier (2014) and Braun and Clarke (2006). To make sense of what our research participants report, we offer an interpretation of the patterns we observe (Lochmiller, 2021). The approach involved a collaborative thematic analysis using a mix of inductive and deductive analysis strategies and mind-mapping to structure content (Braun and Clarke, 2006). While Braun and Clarke’s (2006) framework is often applied from a constructionist perspective, we adopt it at the semantic level following these steps:
Data collection: Each researcher conducted a set of interviews following a common interview protocol, and prepared data for analysis.
Initial coding (inductive): Each researcher undertook an initial round of coding by reviewing each interview, identifying emerging ideas and recording each finding with a phrase label in a spreadsheet.
Both researchers identified interdisciplinarity as an important theme, especially in relation to the interview question: How do you navigate professional and research skill development? Provide an example. Why do you engage in these activities?
Collaborative mind-mapping on interdisciplinarity: We reviewed our initial codes, wrote them on paper cards and pinned them on a whiteboard. Then, we calibrated our understanding of each label and grouped codes that were related in meaning but were labelled differently to form sub-themes.
Theme labelling and refining: We then discussed the meaning and wrote up a definition of each theme. The writing process helped refine our themes and importantly highlighted the thematic interrelationship. Here, we observed and noted which conceptualisations, theoretical ideas or previous research best explained what participants reported.
Rereading and checking data (deductive): Another round of reading followed to verify the presence of identified sub-themes in both sets of interviews, in short, whether they were dominant in our interview data. Themes were confirmed and supporting quotes highlighted. We applied pseudonyms that match the expressed gender of each interviewee and include the home institution.
While this approach might be considered time-consuming as it requires multiple rounds of reading and discussion of the interview data, the great advantages are the enhanced reliability, i.e. inter-rater reliability, and a richer understanding of the data, especially the context in which it is situated. For both researchers, this process promoted increased reflexivity as it facilitated mutual learning and development and was experienced by both as personally rewarding and professionally enriching. This understanding of diverse perspectives, working across different national contexts and higher education paradigms was perceived as equally enriching by our student participants. Our methodology essentially reflected the benefits of interdisciplinary work expressed and valued by our study participants.
Findings
The thematic analysis of interview data revealed four distinct themes associated with interdisciplinarity in research education, providing novel insights into students’ perceptions of interdisciplinarity. The first two pertain to social impact and career opportunities, while the third highlights the role of student agency in interdisciplinary learning. The fourth theme describes the challenges of navigating the traditional academic socialisation in disciplinary contexts:
Interdisciplinarity for social impact
PhD candidates view interdisciplinarity as a powerful catalyst to solving complex social problems which connects to their core motivation of doing research. The aim to have an impact, to act meaningfully, and do something good for society seems to be a strong motivator. A5_Akamu is keen to apply his knowledge when he graduates, saying “what I want to do is to utilise my degree to a certain extent to give something back” and adding he would be “somewhat disappointed” if that didn’t happen. A4_Leo draws on his vast and diverse professional experience and many different disciplinary insights in undertaking his research, mainly business and law, with the aim to go into politics. He says, “I went into academia, or into the PhD trying to do something– you want to change some things, I see a problem, and so I do want to rock the boat a little bit”.
Relatedly, candidates emphasised acquiring applicable knowledge to address real-world problems and bridge academia and society, in A1_Oliver’s words “I wanted to be a bridge between academia and industry basically”. His account reflects a form of boundary-spanning orientation where he positions himself between distinct knowledge domains. For students, the motivation to make an impact is firmly underpinned by the need for interdisciplinary thinking to solve complex problems. A4_Leo adds:
I can bring in a lot of knowledge from that which has helped to inform me later in terms of thinking about concepts, but then I’ve also done economics, sort of urban planning type stuff when I was in Cambridge, and I worked in consulting, and I worked in foreign service […]. You build up different expertise but with a lot of these policy issues you really start to see how everything really links together, and it’s important to have a broad, holistic view of ideas to make decisions. But often that doesn’t really come from just one profession alone.
This quote illustrates interdisciplinary thinking characterised by the ability to draw connections across diverse fields and experiences. Rather than treating knowledge as discipline-bound Leo emphasises the need to integrate knowledge across domains especially in the context of policy development that are inherently complex and multidimensional. G5_Hannah suggests that interdisciplinary thinking works against stereotypes and narrow-mindedness, which she labels as crucial skills for academics of the future, when explaining why she is pursuing interdisciplinary research:
I wonder, the orientation towards an interdisciplinary doctorate cannot also be the goal or one goal. I am not saying that we don’t need people who are incredible specialists in their field. But I experience myself and especially through the different study programs at our department that foster pigeonhole thinking, which is difficult to overcome, especially in this society where stereotypes are used as a tool. I think that especially in graduate schools, interdisciplinary competencies should be trained. […] And that this will find more openness and that we hopefully will achieve this! I say “we” in the sense of young scientists, who perhaps also have the motivation to aim for more togetherness [in society]. (G5_Hannah).
Others describe how having the possibility to connect to non-business disciplinary approaches to uncover social biases underpins the motivation to research for good, e.g. to prevent discrimination. In line with the intellectual argument for interdisciplinarity (Stember, 1991), G3_Sophia says: “[…] you also might need fresh ideas, a kind of view that goes beyond the end of your own nose”. G2_Mika states that PhD research presents opportunities “to educate myself in that sense, […] I would almost consider something like that as obligatory”. For our participants, interdisciplinary engagement is crucial for research development because it extends the thinking beyond conventional boundaries:
Interdisciplinarity for career development
PhD candidates view interdisciplinary work and research as conducive to unlocking and imagining diverse career opportunities and pathways, within and outside the academy, because of the critical transferable skills it can afford (Trinh et al., 2022; De Meyer, 2013). Participants resist disciplinary “boxing”, deliberately staying open to other perspectives, and alert to when interdisciplinary input is needed. A3_Amilia struggles making her interdisciplinary research needs understood, and she laments – in her words – that the university’s “archetype” of a research student is limiting:
If PhDs were structured in a way that they were open to students having a multitude of different careers when they finish rather than sort of assuming that you’ll finish and you’ll become an academic but realising that this program means really different things for different people and some want to go and work in the professional space, some want to work in academia, and some are doing it for neither of those reasons.
The expectation to develop transferable skills and employability for academic and non-academic work is an increasing pressure for doctoral education worldwide (Balaban, 2020; Carvalho and Cardoso, 2020; Cardoso et al., 2022; authors removed for peer review). Interviewees perceive interdisciplinarity as offering possibilities and opportunities to enhance both. Interdisciplinarity emerges as a booster for one’s employability by making multiple career trajectories possible (Lawrence, 2024). A1_Oliver was interviewed at the end of his candidature when he had already secured a post-doc role:
Getting of the postdoc job was only partly based on my research ability. I think they were looking for something specific that I had, and part of it was developed during the PhD time in terms of my outside engagement. So, the ability to work with diverse audiences was attractive to them for this project. The ability to work with kind of senior people from different disciplines was attractive.
A1_Oliver’s proactiveness towards developing an interdisciplinary mindset helped him avoid the narrow one-discipline “archetype” S3_Amilia talked about. Interviewees prioritised personal growth and learning, i.e. developing open-mindedness and engaging with diverse perspectives, to advance professionally and academically. G4_Lutz particularly highlighted his appreciation of abstract thinking and problem-solving but emphasised the need to be practice oriented.
In a precarious academic job market, doctoral students adopt a pragmatic orientation, favouring applied research with societal and economic impact (Lawrence, 2024). They emphasise translating research into practice and building connections between academia and corporate or government sectors, something S3_Amilia passionately comments on: “You need to interact externally. So, if you’re asking for my ideas on how to develop it [interdisciplinary effectiveness], I would say you need to get involved with outside communities. You need to contribute to them”. Foregrounding engagement beyond one’s discipline, she points out an important dimension of interdisciplinarity: working with diverse stakeholders who bring different forms of expertise, saying. “So, interdisciplinary effectiveness, just working with different stakeholders, with people that are outside your own expertise is such a crucial and important skill within the professional world”. A5_Akamu and A4_Leo both speak about communication skills as key skills to building bridges. As an international student still honing his English skills, A5_Akamu goes the extra mile to develop his communication skills, stating “If you can’t communicate well, […] if you want to apply your theories or apply your motivations, apply your ideas, concepts, you should be very good at convincing other people”. A4_Leo echoes the sentiment:
Very good communication skills in terms of being able to translate what I find in my academic research into angles that the academics will find interesting but also good policy angles that our policy makers can actually apply to what they’re doing, and also what the general public can understand what’s going on. It’s really trying to reveal things that I think are quite important.
Here, communication is presented as a key translation tool across multiple audiences, including academic, policy and public domains. Leo emphasises on adapting knowledge to different “angles” suggests an ability to reframe and mediate ideas across distinct communities with different research approaches, perspectives and terminologies. While communication is not a distinctively interdisciplinary skill in itself and widely recognised as an important doctoral and professional skill, its significance here lies in enabling interdisciplinary understanding.
Our participants’ comments reflect the intellectual and practical argument for interdisciplinarity (Stember, 1991) as they comment on the interconnected nature of research-industry collaborations which necessitates working across various boundaries, with diverse stakeholders, and different ways of conceiving and solving a complex problem. A5_Akamu makes a powerful statement for why interdisciplinarity is important:
If you are neglecting some people’s work just because they don’t relate [to] your institution or maybe they have conflicting views or they have conflicting research methodologies […] If you are neglecting research studies because of those philosophical concepts, I think that is also not ethical. So, you have to read and see whether they actually make sense no matter what their discipline is.
Akamu introduces an ethical dimension framing engagement with diverse research traditions as a responsibility not a choice. Interviewees also expressed concern about becoming overly specialised in one single discipline and their interdisciplinary connectivity. G5_Hannah positions interdisciplinarity as a professional goal that shapes how she approaches her research:
Yes, my biggest goal or a very, very big goal, maybe currently the biggest goal, is to avoid developing some tunnel vision, that is I want to continue to think outside the box and to have an interdisciplinary approach to what I’m doing.
Our PhD interview participants seem to actively resist being limited to their discipline alone, which as they suggest is detrimental to addressing pressing societal problems. Akamu’s and Hannah’s quotes express a commitment to intellectual openness and reflexivity. We interpret these accounts as indicative of an interdisciplinary orientation where career development involves cultivating habits of thinking that prioritise breadth and integration of ideas, as well as engagement across disciplinary boundaries:
Interdisciplinarity relies on student agency
PhD candidates are aware of the importance of interdisciplinarity in research, appreciate the integrative approaches to strengthen their thinking and problem-solving skills and actively pursue interdisciplinary encounters by exhibiting certain behaviours.
They use a range of skills and competencies as well as adopt specific behaviours that support interdisciplinary work and research. Understanding that interdisciplinarity is a complex concept that faces tensions in academia, students learn to strategically play the game by working out the quirks and intricacies of the sector (Trinh et al., 2022). In terms of behaviours conducive to interdisciplinarity, students place importance on being flexible, adaptable and open-minded. A1_Oliver comments, for example: “Resourcefulness is a good one [skill]. […] I think being quite flexible and able to pivot or tweak projects in certain directions, so you’ve got a whole range of projects on the go, you see an opportunity which potentially could fit with one of them and you change tack to take advantage of that opportunity”.
Others emphasise the need for strong communication skills and interpersonal skills to be able to connect, partner and network with diverse audiences and stakeholders. A key focus in the toolbox is placed on relationships with peers and diverse stakeholders, networking, forming strategic alliances and developing strong communication skills, which collectively help translate across the “borders”. A3_Amilia:
A lot of the work that I have to do is often partnering with different internal and external stakeholders on different programs of work, working on complex and large organisational projects, providing advice to senior leadership members, members of the board. And I think that a lot of those skills are hugely important for when you’re trying to transfer to that academic career as well because although you might be within a department or a discipline or a school, you often have to build a lot of your own network. And you have to build a lot of your own portfolio and engage in different programs of work and research projects and things like that with stakeholders both inside and outside of the university partnering with businesses of the universities. I think those interpersonal skills are hugely important for that.
Yet also networking with other PhD candidates – within and beyond one’s own discipline – is recognised as a resource and as a tool to improve one’s own research and individual development. Referring to other disciplines and faculties, G1_Paul states:
Therefore, I would actually expect such a doctoral program to already promote exchange among doctoral students, […] so that one also learns from other doctoral students, for example: How do they approach certain questions? That’s very difficult to find out […] if there are no opportunities for exchange at all. I would definitely find that important”.
Students make early encounters with interdisciplinarity when they engage in coursework, e.g. research skill workshops and methodological training. Often coursework is offered by a centrally organised graduate academy or a faculty or school that comprises several disciplines, and students need to apply the learning to their own PhD project that is situated in a particular discipline. Students recognise these are fertile opportunities for students to experience diverse ways of working, thinking and doing research. Although the value of such diversity may not be apparent immediately, our interviewees consider such encounters useful sites for purposefully embedding interdisciplinary training and stimulating interdisciplinary curiosity. With a practitioner background in law and interests in policy work A3_Amilia goes one step further suggesting that the PhD program could be designed to be more conducive to interdisciplinarity:
PhD program that not only allows for but celebrates that diversity I think would be really wonderful because we have students from all over the world. We have students from all different professions, and the skills and the knowledge that everyone brings together. I think more opportunities for each other to engage together and learn from each other could help with that and then, ultimately, hopefully, help shift the university’s understanding of what a research student is or should be.
The examples above demonstrate the agency our participants displayed in seeking interdisciplinary learning and opportunities to go beyond their disciplinary area:
Academic socialisation as an anchor
While the three themes above illustrate the role of interdisciplinarity for research and researcher development as well as student agency involved in the process, the pull of traditional disciplinary socialisation emerged as a strong counterforce. PhD candidates are acutely aware of the prevailing disciplinary focus and being pragmatic follow the lead of the traditional (discipline-focused) academic culture and their supervisors to understand the disciplinary mechanisms to fulfil PhD requirements (Lane et al., 2025; Spronken-Smith et al., 2024; Green et al., 2023). The sentiment that PhD candidates first must learn the ropes of their discipline first came through strongly. It seems not much has changed since Stember (1991) wrote on the pervasiveness of the academic discipline. A3_Amilia elaborates:
In academia, it’s very difficult to find areas that do interdisciplinary research very well. It’s still very new. It’s still really challenging, and I would say that it’s not by virtue of the PhD or the research program itself. You’d be stretched to find a lot of areas that have strong interdisciplinary relationships with other departments at the University, and with any university.
This is further echoed by A1_Oliver:
You can have a really effective research career without doing any inter-disciplinary work. So, yeah, I’d say that one– I mean, I think interdisciplinary work is good and I personally find it more interesting, and I think it leads to more impactful research, but I wouldn’t say it’s an essential thing.
In the interviews the PhD candidates emphasise the need to acquire a deeper understanding of disciplinary thinking because it is directly linked to successful and timely PhD completion. Driven by the expectation to publish early on, as A1_Oliver claims: “coming to the realisation that [to be] employable in a university, in the early stages of your career, not always, but generally needs, you need to have top quality publications already”. There is, hence, a practical orientation of turning to one’s discipline.
Candidates express an acute awareness of the discipline-focus often modelled by their supervisors (Green et al., 2023). A2_Isla comments: “Because it’s often about the relationship between the supervisors and the candidate, and that can be really unique and quite hard to generalise for everyone”. Other candidates ended their response to an interview question often with “this is just from my experience of my discipline”. Disciplinary differences extend beyond different topics, journals and research methods. A1_Oliver’s comment below, for instance, alerts us to how students perceive different career opportunities afforded by some disciplines and not others (Spronken-Smith et al., 2024):
My research is not something that’s going to be a game-changer in terms of making myself employable. I mean I feel like it’s quite different in some disciplines than others. Say, for example, I think a finance researcher could more easily transition into some sort of research role in the industry than I could.
One interviewee (G5_Hannah) justifies this prevalent focus on disciplinary socialisation as academic pragmatism. This pragmatism can be found in the need to understand in depth the hidden values behind journals and disciplinary discourses, especially as one chooses the adequate outlet for one’s own papers:
Which journals are relevant for the chair? But also, for me personally? Does it [a journal] fit with my values? […] Does it fit what I want to do? Does it go in that direction, and will it endanger my future career if I do a PhD in it? There is no good or bad, but there are values that somehow have to fit [with my career expectations].
On the one hand, understanding one’s discipline seems to be a pragmatic choice for PhD candidates, on the other, disciplinary understanding helps questioning the underlying values in the discourses of other disciplines as well. While students’ engagement in interdisciplinarity is motivated by the quest of career building and problem-solving, traditional socialisation is perceived to be about disciplinary belonging or not belonging, requiring students to frame their scholarly identities strategically (Trinh et al., 2022).
Discussion
Our in-depth exploratory study of a small PhD cohort in a German and an Australian university reveals important novel insights about the role of interdisciplinarity in the early researcher formation which have important implications for universities, research policies, PhD programmes and supervisors. Firstly, developing interdisciplinary capacity is perceived as beneficial for research and researcher development. Our study participants believe that interdisciplinary approaches to problem-solving are superior and are stimulated by the possibilities of real social impact. Indeed, previous research had identified interdisciplinarity as a key factor in addressing sustainability and complex societal challenges (Michel and Förster, 2025). Interdisciplinarity is also considered beneficial for one’s career including professional, academic and researcher development. Secondly, our participants report significant initiative that drives interdisciplinary engagement that go beyond institutional efforts to promote interdisciplinary connections. However, their ambition and agency are hampered by traditional academic socialisation and therefore balanced with the pragmatic focus on fulfilling disciplinary expectations and hence, timely PhD completion. As such disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity serve two different goals, hence, why our participants straddle both paradigms. These insights reveal various implications for research, practice and policy.
In relation to further research, our findings reflect broader trends in doctoral education internationally, such as increasing pressures to do applied research, to focus on career development and transferable skills (Lane et al., 2025; Spronken-Smith et al., 2024), the need to actively design one’s own research (Carvalho and Cardoso, 2020; Cardoso et al., 2022). However, these trends have only been recently reported as global trends, and it is indeed interesting to see them reflected in our students’ views and behaviours. This should stimulate further research on the effects of global doctoral education transformations on students’ candidature navigation behaviours. The salience of interdisciplinarity in students’ focus is worth a deeper exploration, e.g. whether PhD students’ views on interdisciplinary research differ and why and how they engage in it (Michel and Förster, 2025). It is striking how our PhD students in both countries seem to subscribe to the view that universities need to collaborate and engage with the broader society to cultivate critical thinking and drive intellectual debate necessary to solve global challenges. Barnett (2000) highlights the need for universities to adapt to changing circumstances and engage in innovative practices to meet the evolving needs of society and maintain its role as a place of intellectual progress. The author encourages an active dialogue and genuine partnerships between universities and other sectors of society to address complex challenges of today’s and future society. Our PhD study participants seem to firmly recognise this as they work, think and act in the multiple in-between spaces bridging academia and society. As such, it is worth exploring how much PhD students contribute to building such bridges, directly and inadvertently.
Our study further confirms the positive benefits of interdisciplinarity for research and researchers (Rashid, 2022; Mountford et al., 2020; Kovacic and Marcos-Valls, 2023), and it is timely we revise the structures that currently support or hamper it. University and research policies need to reward and promote interdisciplinary research and education. Universities, governments and other organisations must ensure that there are sufficient resources and funding available to support these initiatives. Additionally, educators must work to bridge the gap between different disciplines and create a collaborative environment for students and researchers or students and their peers to work together (Holley, 2008; Kovacic and Marcos-Valls, 2023). Since supervisors play an important role in socialising and shaping of students’ academic identities (Green et al., 2023), they must engage with interdisciplinary ideas and perspectives to be susceptible to their students’ motivations and understandings of interdisciplinarity.
Finally, research projects should be designed to take advantage of the unique strengths of each field, allowing students to gain a more comprehensive and holistic understanding of their research topic as well as empowering international collaborations. Through these measures, universities can create an interdisciplinary environment where students are able to gain a broader understanding of their research topic, and researchers can collaborate more effectively to uncover novel insights. Furthermore, by providing resources and funding for interdisciplinary research and collaboration, universities can ensure that these initiatives are successful and impactful (et al., 2022).
A limitation of this study is its focus on business PhD students, whose professionally oriented discipline may encourage greater use of employability and transferable-skills discourse (De Meyer, 2013), limiting broader representativeness. However, this focus is analytically suitable given the study’s emphasis on interdisciplinarity in business doctoral education. Although the study includes candidates from Australia and Germany, its qualitative design does not support generalisable national comparisons. Differences in students’ accounts were more closely related to disciplinary norms within business education than to national context.
Importantly, we contribute to a relatively small body of research and the perspectives of those directly impacted, i.e. students, by traditional researcher development structures and policies.
Conclusion
The movement towards interdisciplinary research is rooted in the belief that wicked problems defy solutions within narrow confines of a discipline. This study reports on ten interviews with business PhD students from Australia and Germany which provide rich insights on the value of interdisciplinarity in their research education and professional development. Interdisciplinarity emerged as a potent catalyst for addressing intricate societal challenges and fuelling students’ intrinsic motivation to solve wicked problems. Importantly, interdisciplinary engagement was further perceived as widening diverse career prospects both within and beyond academia, owing to its cultivation of versatile transferable skills. However, candidates remain closely guided by traditional disciplinary norms shaped by academic culture and supervisors, which continue to define expectations of PhD success. Despite this, they recognise the importance of interdisciplinarity in research, and actively seek opportunities for interdisciplinary learning and engagement. Finally, the limited divergence between accounts across national contexts suggests that disciplinary expectations within business doctoral education may play a more influential role than national doctoral systems in shaping experiences of interdisciplinarity. Future research should also examine the effect of local and institutional structures on candidates’ experiences of interdisciplinarity.
Our study sets an agenda for further research and stimulates practitioners and policymakers to revise doctoral education structures to promote the benefits of interdisciplinarity. After all, current PhD candidates form a new generation of academics who can overcome disciplinary divides and bridge the gaps between academia and industry, and importantly, already show signs of significant agency in reshaping what knowledge is created and how it is generated.
Statements and declarations
This work was supported by the [university removed for peer review] grant. The authors declare they have no financial interests.
