Abstract

Interdisciplinary collaboration has a long tradition in occupational health and safety, a field covered by a wide variety of disciplines, from anthropology to engineering and from design to psychology. However, little is known about the key elements favouring the development of harmonious cooperation. The aim of this study is to document the perceptions of researchers about their own discipline and that of their collaborators with regard to the exchange process. Forty researchers were interviewed on two cases of collaboration that took place in large interdisciplinary teams projects. They were questioned about exchanges in terms of knowledge, method, analyses, perspectives, and impacts. Disciplines were grouped into four categories: health sciences, applied sciences, management, and social sciences. In a quarter of the cases, collaborators were from the social sciences. They saw themselves as less concerned by the impacts and transfer activities of the research results compared to their collaborative disciplines, but as more contributive to the advancement of knowledge. They perceived their disciplines as having a better exchange potential than was seen by the others. For all the interviewees, the exchanges on perspective were considered the most difficult and challenging part of the exchanges, but the most fruitful. Perceptions of the exchange process (frequency, duration, continuity) were quite similar from one discipline to the other.