Interdisciplinary research is often recommended and occasionally studied, but little has been written about the personal, practical, and methodological issues involved in doing it. In this article, the authors describe one particular research collaboration between a business communication scholar and an information systems researcher. They present their observations about the political pitfalls and personal benefits of their interdisciplinary collaboration. As they attempt to generalize from their experience, the authors conclude that politics in the broadest sense of the term is the most critical challenge to the conduct of interdisciplinary research.
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