The Engineering Transdisciplinary Approach Applied to International Business

This research concerns transdisciplinarity in business and management, particularly international business (IB). The problem is that interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary are more commonly used than transdisciplinary in the IB field. The aim is to understand the differences and similarities between the fields regarding these terms. The primary stakeholder categories impacted are researchers, students, and practitioners. This problem is essential because research across disciplines and fields has grown, and stakeholders will benefit from a common ground to develop research. The evident benefit is the transaction cost reduction. The concept of interdisciplinarity has existed in the IB field since the late 1980s, but has not developed into transdisciplinarity. In engineering, there have been efforts to differentiate the terms. Still, quantitative tools may be used to explore dimensions that non-quantitative tools cannot capture. The contribution of this research is to propose a definition of Transdisciplinarity in the field of IB based on engineering concepts, so IB researchers and practitioners can benefit from it. Documenting this transdisciplinarity definition in IB is expected to promote more research, understanding, and application of findings, contributing to more efficient projects and more impact and thus promoting a better world. © 2025 The Authors.

The Engineering Transdisciplinary Approach Applied to International Business Chapter in Scopus