Table 2. Differences between... | Emerald Publishing

Table 2.

Differences between multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and transdisciplinarity

Multidisciplinarity	Interdisciplinarity	Transdisciplinarity
The collaboration of several disciplines, each remaining unchanged and working with the usual disciplinary framings	The integration or synthesis of perspectives from several disciplines	The transgression or transcendence of disciplinary norms, whether in pursuit of a fusion of disciplines, an approach oriented towards complexity or real-world problem solving or an approach to overcoming the distance between professional and lay knowledge or between research and politics or society
These approaches each reflect a spectrum. For example, in its weakest form, interdisciplinarity can be little more than cooperation, and in its strongest form, it can be a basis for transformative reconfiguration of disciplines

Multidisciplinarity	Interdisciplinarity	Transdisciplinarity
The collaboration of several disciplines, each remaining unchanged and working with the usual disciplinary framings	The integration or synthesis of perspectives from several disciplines	The transgression or transcendence of disciplinary norms, whether in pursuit of a fusion of disciplines, an approach oriented towards complexity or real-world problem solving or an approach to overcoming the distance between professional and lay knowledge or between research and politics or society
These approaches each reflect a spectrum. For example, in its weakest form, interdisciplinarity can be little more than cooperation, and in its strongest form, it can be a basis for transformative reconfiguration of disciplines

Source: Authors’ own table based on Barry et al. (2008); Lawrence and Després (2004); Petts et al. (2008)