Le caractère interdisciplinaire des recherches sur l'administration
Authors: Starosciak Jerzy 
Published: November 2010

The Interdisciplinary Character of Research on Administration.

In a study of the interdisciplinary problems of administration, the author is interested in the activity of teams elaborating limited syntheses on essentiel problems and not on universal ones. He presents what he considers are essential topics based on his personal experience in the practical working in this field.

The problem of methodology is the first to confront the researcher, the need existing for different members of the team to use different methods, despite supposedly comparative results. The same method cannot be used indifferently by the Jurist, the Sociologist, the Psychologist and the Economist even when the team's research work bears on a common project.

The second problem is that of vocabulary and common comprehension. Legal terms have a certain ascendancy over other scientific terminology, since they are invested with the authority of the Law. Teams should therefore be versed in legal terminology and Jurists should assimilate notions proper to other sciences and techniques, such as Sociology or Computerization. To render the language of comparative research adequate, a larger spectrum of terms, common to several sciences, would be useful although total identity seems impossible.

The third problem is in the composition of the team. "Qualitative disproportions" in the capacities of team members does not necessarily disqualify the team, as long as the central creative guideline of the research is assured by able specialists, particularly since the other participating disciplines only exploit the data and are not expected to propose new conceptions.

The fourth problem is exploiting the material, especially that which has already been collected by the administration, concerning its activity and its social effects. This material is often unpublished and it would be useful if research had access to it. In other words, the team should be allowed to practice independently even when the documents belong to the administration. For the best results people having a practical knowledge of the functioning of the administration should also be integrated into the team.

The fifth problem is that of deriving conclusions. The team's composition and the subjects of the research should already give some indications regarding the conclusion, the question on which the conclusion should bear having already been decided when the team was created. Only the contents remain unknown, although hypothetically foreseen. There is, therefore, not only the case of the contents of the conclusions but also of their efficiency or social value. The measure of this value is their present or future use in bettering society. From this point of view the criticism of the conclusions often leads to mutual accusations between theory and practice. The author of this article who is a "professional theoretician" admits his own tendency to lend an ear to practice and concludes:

"Although the detailed solution of administrative problems is part of the activity of different sciences, interdisciplinary research teams have another job to fulfill. Over the past 20 years, analysis of the development and needs of science indicates that the important needs, and possibilities for discoveries and new propositions lie at the crossroads of the different scientific branches. Thus, the best way to generate new answers to the same questions concerning the administration is by studying "fronteer" problems via interdisciplinary teams".