Conceptual Barriers to Creating Integrative Universities

Abstract

Today's society looks to universities for solutions to broadbased issues that require cross-disciplinary expertise. Yet, the organizational structure of our institutions remains locked in academic and administrative silos that have little genuine ability to communicate or to recognize the interdependence of knowledge. Why does the capacity to communicate between disciplines and units remain limited? How do formalizations of our experience create barriers? What kind of reflection would it take to subject our mental models of knowledge and learning to critical inquiry? This discussion highlights one of the most entrenched 'group identity myths' that underlie the structure of modern academic institutions, the 'triviality of integration' thesis.

The alignment of University curricula with the building of a Smart City: A case study from Barcelona

“…This new approach faces an important resistance to change that Awbrey & Awbrey (2001) analyze concluding that two main barriers exist which are the wrong academic reward system too oriented to research and not to application and a trivializing of the integration built on that common sense suffices to achieve the necessary synthesis of the specialized in-silo knowledge.…”

Pour une approche instrumentale du développement stratégique des organisations publiques : le cas d’une université française pluridisciplinaire de taille moyenne

“…Citons à titre d'exemple le numéro spécial de la revue Organization qui regroupait notamment, en 2001, une série de contributions sur l'évolution du modèle universitaire anglo-saxon (Awbrey et Awbrey, 2001 ;Delanty, 2001). Pfeffer et Fong (2004) ont, pour leur part, abordé la question du "business" des business schools américaines.…”

Expanding the View of Scholarship

“…Recently, commentators in higher education have returned to exploring the boundaries and barriers to knowledge development (Awbrey & Awbrey, 2001;McClintock, 2001). The new perspectives challenge the hierarchal view that knowledge is derived from research, summarized in theory, and passed down to the practitioner to apply.…”