what is the convergence thesis

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The Convergence Thesis Explained

Table of Contents

The origins of the convergence thesis, key elements of the convergence thesis, the implications of convergence.

• Criticisms of the Convergence Thesis

The convergence thesis is an essential concept in sociology that deals with the idea that industrialized societies, regardless of their initial ideological or political differences, will increasingly resemble each other over time. This concept gained prominence during the mid-20th century, as scholars attempted to understand the consequences of modernization and economic development in both capitalist and socialist societies. The idea suggests that as nations industrialize, they tend to adopt similar technological, organizational, and social structures, leading to a convergence in their economic and societal outcomes. While it has its supporters and detractors, the convergence thesis remains a key concept for understanding global patterns of development.

The convergence thesis emerged in the post-World War II period, during a time when many scholars sought to understand the rapid changes taking place in industrial societies. The Cold War and the ideological competition between capitalism and socialism spurred debates about which system would prove more successful in the long run. Early proponents of the convergence thesis, such as Clark Kerr and his colleagues, believed that both capitalist and socialist systems would become more similar due to the pressures of industrialization. They argued that industrial societies, whether in the United States, the Soviet Union, or elsewhere, would experience common trends such as technological advancement, bureaucratization, and urbanization.

The thesis was also influenced by modernization theory, which posited that as societies modernized, they would follow a similar trajectory of development. Modernization was seen as a process through which traditional, agrarian societies transitioned to industrialized, urban ones, with corresponding changes in culture , politics, and social structure. The convergence thesis expanded upon this by suggesting that not only would societies modernize, but that they would increasingly resemble each other in the process, regardless of their ideological origins.

At its core, the convergence thesis posits that industrialization is a universal process that leads to the development of similar social, economic, and political institutions across different societies. Some of the key elements associated with this process include:

1. Technological Advancement

One of the driving forces behind convergence is technological advancement. As societies industrialize, they rely increasingly on complex machinery, automation, and digital technology to drive their economies. This reliance on technology requires a highly skilled labor force, efficient organizational structures, and sophisticated systems of management. As a result, countries with very different political systems must adopt similar technologies and organizational practices to remain competitive in the global economy. This technological standardization leads to a convergence in both the structure of workplaces and the nature of employment .

2. Bureaucratization

Another central aspect of the convergence thesis is the idea of bureaucratization. Industrial societies require complex systems of administration and management to coordinate large-scale production, distribution, and public services. Regardless of whether a society is capitalist or socialist, it requires a bureaucracy to manage its economy, enforce regulations, and oversee public services. This bureaucratization of society is seen as a necessary response to the complexities of industrial life, and it contributes to the convergence of different political and economic systems.

3. Urbanization

The process of industrialization also leads to rapid urbanization, as people move from rural areas to cities in search of employment. Urbanization brings with it similar patterns of social life, including the development of large, densely populated cities with similar infrastructures, such as transportation systems, housing developments, and public services. Urbanization also leads to the emergence of similar social issues, such as income inequality , housing shortages, and environmental degradation, which must be addressed by governments and societies in similar ways, regardless of their ideological orientation.

4. Education and Professionalization

As industrial societies develop, there is an increasing demand for skilled labor, which in turn leads to the expansion of educational systems. Education becomes a key institution for producing the professionals needed to manage and operate complex industrial economies. Schools and universities become more standardized across societies, offering similar curricula in fields such as engineering, medicine, and business administration. This process of education and professionalization further contributes to the convergence of societies, as people across different countries acquire similar skills and knowledge, leading to a more globally homogeneous workforce.

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What Is Convergence Theory?

How Industrialization Affects Developing Nations

Danny Lehman/Getty Images 

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Convergence theory presumes that as nations move from the early stages of industrialization toward becoming fully industrialized , they begin to resemble other industrialized societies in terms of societal norms and technology.

The characteristics of these nations effectively converge. Ultimately, this could lead to a unified global culture if nothing impeded the process.

Convergence theory has its roots in the functionalist perspective of economics which assumes that societies have certain requirements that must be met if they are to survive and operate effectively. 

Convergence theory became popular in the 1960s when it was formulated by the University of California, Berkeley Professor of Economics Clark Kerr.

Some theorists have since expounded upon Kerr's original premise. They say industrialized nations may become more alike in some ways than in others.

Convergence theory is not an across-the-board transformation. Although technologies may be shared , it's not as likely that more fundamental aspects of life such as religion and politics would necessarily converge—though they may. 

Convergence vs. Divergence

Convergence theory is also sometimes referred to as the "catch-up effect."

When technology is introduced to nations still in the early stages of industrialization, money from other nations may pour in to develop and take advantage of this opportunity. These nations may become more accessible and susceptible to international markets. This allows them to "catch up" with more advanced nations.

If capital is not invested in these countries, however, and if international markets do not take notice or find that opportunity is viable there, no catch-up can occur. The country is then said to have diverged rather than converged.

Unstable nations are more likely to diverge because they are unable to converge due to political or social-structural factors, such as lack of educational or job-training resources. Convergence theory, therefore, would not apply to them. 

Convergence theory also allows that the economies of developing nations will grow more rapidly than those of industrialized countries under these circumstances. Therefore, all should reach an equal footing eventually.

Some examples of convergence theory include Russia and Vietnam, formerly purely communist countries that have eased away from strict communist doctrines as the economies in other countries, such as the United States, have burgeoned.

State-controlled socialism is less the norm in these countries now than is market socialism, which allows for economic fluctuations and, in some cases, private businesses as well. Russia and Vietnam have both experienced economic growth as their socialistic rules and politics have changed and relaxed to some degree.

Former World War II Axis nations including Italy, Germany, and Japan rebuilt their economic bases into economies not dissimilar to those that existed among the Allied Powers of the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain.

More recently, in the mid-20th century, some East Asian countries converged with other more developed nations. Singapore , South Korea, and Taiwan are now all considered to be developed, industrialized nations.

Sociological Critiques

Convergence theory is an economic theory that presupposes that the concept of development is

• a universally good thing
• defined by economic growth.

It frames convergence with supposedly "developed" nations as a goal of so-called "undeveloped" or "developing" nations, and in doing so, fails to account for the numerous negative outcomes that often follow this economically-focused model of development.

Many sociologists, postcolonial scholars, and environmental scientists have observed that this type of development often only further enriches the already wealthy, and/or creates or expands a middle class while exacerbating the poverty and poor quality of life experienced by the majority of the nation in question.

Additionally, it is a form of development that typically relies on the over-use of natural resources, displaces subsistence and small-scale agriculture, and causes widespread pollution and damage to the natural habitat.

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Do the Right Thing: Understanding the Interest-Convergence Thesis

Northwestern University Law Review Colloquy , Vol. 106, No. 248, 2012

13 Pages Posted: 26 Feb 2015

Stephen Matthew Feldman

University of Wyoming - College of Law

Date Written: February 24, 2012

Professor Derrick Bell was one of the most influential constitutional scholars of the last fifty years. His insights spurred civil rights scholars as well as thinkers in other fields. One of his most important legacies is the interest-convergence thesis, which asserts that, historically, African Americans gained social justice primarily when their interests converged with the interests of the white majority. In a recently published article, Rethinking the Interest-Convergence Thesis, Professor Justin Driver calls this legacy into question. This Essay defends the interest-convergence thesis from Driver’s attack. It argues that the analytical flaws he identifies only exist by dint of his fundamental misreading of the interest-convergence thesis.

Keywords: critical race theory, social justice, interest-convergence, Derrick Bell

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Stephen Matthew Feldman (Contact Author)

University of wyoming - college of law ( email ).

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What is convergence theory in sociology?

This theory is one of social change that has been given by economic professor Clark Kerr in a book by him and his colleagues called ’Industrialism and Industrial Man’ in the 1960s. The convergence theory is the one which postulates that all the societies as they move from the early industrial development to complete industrialization tend to move towards a condition of similarity in terms of the general societal and technological norms. This is to say that as the societies move towards development they look become alike will similar structures, which means that the differences among the societies will reduce as they are ultimately on the same path of development. This would thus lead to a single global culture.

This theory given by Clark Kerr is what is known as the ‘logic of industrialization’ which he has also mentioned in his writing, this logic is the thesis of the theory and states that industrialization everywhere has similar consequences whether the society is a capitalist one or a communist one.

This convergence may reflect in the form of what can be called the ‘catch up effect’. This ‘catch up’ refers to the process of opening up the economy of a country to the foreign economy allowing the inflow of capital, this investment helps the economy to maintain pace with the more advanced societies, this process usually takes place when the society is introduced to the industrialization process. However, there might be cases when the reverse may happen i.e. the economy may diverge instead of converging. Such divergence takes place in the case of economies in which the foreign capital is not invested, this may be due to the political and social factors such as lack of education or job training, etc. often these nations are the ones that are unstable.

It is believed that the third world nations are supposed to get out of their conditions of poverty through the process of convergence as they take up the form of western industrial societies.

The convergence theory is often related to the study of modernization, it is believed that the path of development is the one that has been taken by the western industrial societies, which will be undertaken by every society in order to reach complete development and modernization. Thus there is a foxed pattern of development which will be followed. There is thus a convergence if the ideas attitudes and beliefs, thus the overall way of thinking and doing things.

Thus we see that while the convergence theory has made many countries into market economies such as the ones found in the western societies, as it has in Russia and Vietnam which were communist countries earlier and are now market economies.

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Do the Right Thing: Understanding the Interest-Convergence Thesis

Stephen Matthew Feldman , University of Wyoming College of Law Follow

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Professor Derrick Bell was one of the most influential constitutional scholars of the last fifty years His insights spurred civil rights scholars as well as thinkers in other fields One of his most important legacies is the interestconvergence thesis which asserts that historically African Americans gained social justice primarily when their interests converged with the interests of the white majority In a recently published article Rethinking the InterestConvergence Thesis Professor Justin Driver calls this legacy into question This Essay defends the interestconvergence thesis from Driver's attack It argues that the analytical flaws he identifies only exist by dint of his fundamental misreading of the interestconvergence thesis

Recommended Citation

Feldman, Stephen Matthew, "Do the Right Thing: Understanding the Interest-Convergence Thesis" (2015). Faculty Articles . 126. https://scholarship.law.uwyo.edu/faculty_articles/126

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Derrick Bell’s Interest Convergence and the Permanence of Racism: A Reflection on Resistance

• Alexis Hoag

Nothing about this moment — COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on Black people, Trump’s explicit anti-Black racism , or the mass demonstrations following lethal police use of force against Black people — would have surprised Professor Derrick Bell.  These fault lines are not new; rather, these events merely expose longstanding structural damage to the nation’s foundation.  A central theme of Bell’s scholarship is the permanence and cyclical predictability of racism.  He urged us to accept “the reality that we live in a society in which racism has been internalized and institutionalized,” a society that produced “a culture from whose inception racial discrimination has been a regulating force for maintaining stability and growth.”  Bell would have also foreseen Trump’s presidency as the likely follow-up to eight years of the nation’s first Black President.  Any amount of racial advancement, Bell argued , signified “temporary ‘peaks of progress,’ short-lived victories that slide into irrelevance as racial patterns adapt in ways that maintain white dominance.”  In this reflection, I revisit Bell’s arguments, including his interest convergence theory ,  to provide clarity on the current moment and to reflect on the way his scholarship has impacted my work as a civil rights lawyer, scholar, and teacher.  

I first encountered Professor Bell in 2005, as a student at New York University School of Law. By then, he had maintained a visiting professorship for nearly two decades in an arrangement made with his former student, NYU Law Dean and later University President, John Sexton .  Bell’s legendary status as the father of Critical Race Theory and as a champion of faculty diversity was firmly ensconced.  At the time, I was active in a student group demanding more faculty of color, and our group asked Bell for advice.  Soft-spoken and impeccably dressed, he was surprisingly accessible.  Bell was intimately aware of our concerns, having experienced them in nearly every professional space he had entered.  His advice was gentle and encouraging, but decisive.  With his support, we regularly staged silent protests before faculty meetings, lining the hallway armed with posters, as our professors walked past to vote on candidates.  Bell likely sensed that staging the protests would be more beneficial for our development as social justice lawyers than for hiring more people of color for the faculty.  

To the casual observer, Bell’s warmth, wit, and gentle demeanor belied his radical beliefs and scholarship.  But what made his writings, actions, and teaching so effective was that Bell embodied all these qualities.  As his student and teaching assistant in Constitutional Law, it was hard for me to reconcile what I perceived as pessimism and cynicism in his writings with the affable and charming professor presiding over the classroom.  At first read, the ending of Space Traders made me shudder, but I could not deny the allegory’s accuracy in depicting the plight of Black people at the hands of white people in power; given the opportunity to access wealth, unlimited energy, and technological advances in exchange for Black people, white America made the trade.  It is one of Bell’s many works to which I often turn, as I did last year when I transitioned to teaching law .  And I frequently recommend it to my students.

Only after I started practicing did I cease seeing Bell as a pessimist and recognize him for what he was: a realist .  Working on capital cases as an appellate defender in Tennessee, no federal judge wanted to acknowledge the gross racial disparities in death sentencing in a state where Black men convicted in a single county made up the largest subgroup on death row.  The draconian rules of procedural default prevented these same clients from securing relief on otherwise meritorious claims of racial discrimination in jury selection.  Later, as a lawyer at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. ( LDF ), I inherited one of the Mississippi school desegregation cases that Bell filed with his colleagues Mel Leventhal and Marian Wright Edelman .  Despite five decades of federal court monitoring, the public school district was still failing to adhere to the law established in Brown v. Board of Education .  My colleagues and I reengaged members of the original plaintiff class, now grandparents of children enrolled in the same district.  The district no longer operated a dual school system separated by race; instead, it operated a single, virtually all-Black, under-resourced school system that funneled children into the criminal legal system.  In civil rights and the criminal legal system, I was fighting the same fight as my forebearers with similarly racist results.

So, as Bell posed , “Now what?”

For the answer, I turn to Bell’s theory of interest convergence: that the rights of Black people only advance when they converge with the interests of white people.  Twenty-five years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education , Bell argued that the holding  “cannot be understood without some consideration of the decision’s value to whites, not simply those concerned about the immorality of racial inequality, but also those whites in policymaking positions able to see the economic and political advances at home and abroad that would follow abandonment of segregation.”  How else, Bell argued , could one account for the country’s “sudden shift . . . away from . . . separate but equal . . . towards a commitment to desegregation?”  Then, the world was in the midst of the Cold War, and the nation’s hypocrisy in its treatment of Black people at home was not lost on our adversaries abroad.

It is through this lens that I view the actions that have transpired since George Floyd’s murder: the rapid passage of law enforcement reforms (that had previously stalled), swift actions and statements from corporations decrying anti-Black racism (from corporations that had previously denied it), and the sudden cross-racial embrace of “Black Lives Matter” (by white people who had previously resisted it).  To be clear, my argument here largely applies to the sharp increase in (public) racial consciousness among white people.  What has changed is not the legal, or even social status of Black people, but rather the social (media) acceptability of anti-Black racism.  Said another way, it is now popular and financially advantageous to be anti-racist.

The popularity and profitability of anti-racism is nowhere more evident than on social media.  With many Americans either out of work or working from home, we are all glued to pocket-sized screens.  The hyper focus online created a higher stakes platform for the performance of protesting anti-Black racism.  Social media enables users to measure the popularity and reach of each post.  Yes, millions marched against anti-Black racism in cities and small towns across the nation, but these demonstrations were largely captured and shared via social media.  Appearing at a Black Lives Matter demonstration showed solidarity, but appearing and then posting a photograph of it had measurable social currency.  Consumer-driven corporations were all quick to showcase their anti-racist positions.  Never mind that some of these corporations had engaged, or continue to engage, in anti-Black practices .  Although retail spending decreased during the pandemic, companies could not possibly lose more money speaking out against racism, but they could by remaining silent, or worse, condoning racism .

I argue that a major motivating factor for many white peoples’ actions and corporations’ pronouncements against racism was not to advance Black equality.  Rather, it was the realization that the nation cannot maintain its economic, political, and social superiority over the rest of the world while remaining silent about anti-Black racism in America.  Racism is a bad look.  Silence in the wake of racist events is even worse.  And just as in the 1950s, the world is watching America. Only now, the world is consuming America’s hypocrisy in real time on social media.  Instead of America decrying human rights abuses across the globe, the globe is protesting human rights abuses in America.  We all witnessed the responses: Democratic members of Congress donned West African kente cloth to announce their police reform bill, later kneeling in long-belated solidarity with Colin Kaepernick.  Broadcast from the Rose Garden, Trump gave lip service to the experiences of Black people at the hands of law enforcement.  Quaker Oats changed the name and image of its Aunt Jemima brand.  NASCAR prohibited confederate flags from its events and properties.  All abrupt, performative displays of wokeness, despite prior unanswered complaints of anti-Black racism.

And lest we forget, just a few years ago many white people responded with distaste and hostility to the expression “Black lives matter” following the murders of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown.  With earnestness, well-meaning white people asked , “don’t all lives matter”?  Yet, here we are, roughly six years later, witnessing millions of people posting black squares on their Instagram accounts with long captions or simple hashtags denouncing anti-Black racism.  Again, these were largely white people.  I observed many of my Black peers posting variations of: “I’m tired” or nothing at all.  On my bike rides and runs through New York City, whenever I pass wealthy, white enclaves I frequently observe signs in windows or draped flags adorned with the words: “Black Lives Matter” and “White Silence is Violence.”  Where were these signs when New York City police officers fatally shot Amadou Diallo, unarmed and standing in the doorway of his home, 41 times?

Will this moral posturing online translate into substantive changes in the law and in society for Black people?  It was lost on no one that police used excessive force on Black people protesting excessive police force against Black people.  Law enforcement officials murdered Rayshard Brooks on camera weeks after officers murdered George Floyd, his death also captured on camera.  Officials have not yet arrested the officers who murdered Breonna Taylor.  The wave of police reforms is not insignificant, but when we closely examine these measures, they fail to provide paths to redress for Black victims of excessive police force or even address the practices that result in a disproportionate use of force against Black people.  For that, we would need to eradicate the presumption of criminality and dangerousness that society assigns Black people.  But according to Bell, that is unlikely because “white people desperately need[] . . . black people — or most blacks — in a subordinate status in order to sustain . . . the . . . preferential treatment to which every white person is granted…”

Bell warned us that “yearning for racial equality is fantasy.”  There is no vaccine for America’s illness.  Like Bell, I do not believe we can eradicate racism from a nation built and dependent upon it.  The subordination of Black people provides “whites with a comforting sense of their position in society. . . whether or not [white people] want it.”  But this acknowledgment does not mean we should abandon the fight to challenge the racial hierarchy.

To counter the permanence of racism, Professor Bell advocated that our fight against it must be equally persistent.  He implored us to “realize with our slave forbearers that the struggle for freedom is, at bottom, a manifestation of our humanity that survives and grows stronger through resistance to oppression even if that oppression is never overcome.”  Although many of my death-sentenced clients — now represented by successor counsel — still await rulings from federal judges, there was nevertheless something meaningful about the process of post-conviction litigation.  For many of my clients, the work my team and I performed on their behalves enabled them for the first time to feel listened to, heard, and seen.  In investigating and presenting their habeas claims, we told their stories and elevated their humanity.  The collective effort reminded our clients that their lives have value.  Later, while working for LDF, I encountered an older woman in Meridian, Mississippi. She had grandchildren enrolled in the same school district as her children were during the desegregation litigation Bell initiated.  She recalled that the white townspeople threatened to kill her and her children if she got involved in the lawsuit.  This was no idle threat: James Chaney had been teaching her children to read when he was lynched during Freedom Summer.  I asked why she nevertheless agreed to put her name on the lawsuit.  She responded: “At least I’d die fighting with my babies.”  Sometimes, the whole point is to resist. Professor Bell was a brilliant scholar, activist, and civil rights litigator, but he was also an exceptional teacher and mentor.  He gifted me with the knowledge that there is power in amplifying the voices and experiences of those most impacted by racial inequality.  And although I may not see the change for which I advocate, there is value in the struggle against oppression.  I will continue to bear witness, amplify stories of injustice, and encourage my students to do the same.

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A Theory To Better Understand Diversity, And Who Really Benefits

UCLA students hold crosses, while taking part in a 2006 rally on campus to express their concerns about the lack of racial diversity in the student body. Mel Melcon/LA Times via Getty Images hide caption

UCLA students hold crosses, while taking part in a 2006 rally on campus to express their concerns about the lack of racial diversity in the student body.

Last week, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos appointed Candice Jackson as the acting assistant secretary of the Office for Civil Rights. Jackson will oversee a staff of hundreds charged with responding to thousands of civil rights complaints every year, including some from students who feel discriminated against based on race, color, national origin, sex, ability, and age.

ProPublica reported that while an undergraduate at Stanford University, Jackson, a white woman, wrote an article for a student newspaper complaining about a section of a calculus course designed for "minority" students. The math class was an example of "racial discrimination" against white people, she wrote. In another op-ed for the paper, Jackson dismissed the needs of women "banding together by gender to fight for their rights." Might Jackson's words from twenty years ago fuel the idea that her office may not fully enforce Title VI and IX protections for people of color and white women? Do they signal that she may instruct her staff to elevate the complaints of white students or faculty who believe they are victims of racial discrimination?

A stronger line of inquiry begins with this question: what if these diversity policies actually improved the social position of white students and faculty?

Our Favorite Word — 'Diversity' — Is Under The Microscope At Mizzou And Yale

As an Asian American professor who teaches about race, I regularly find myself at the center of campus diversity programs and initiatives. I work at a public Midwestern university where approximately 90 percent of students and faculty are white. Because this lack of racial diversity is so conspicuous, my institution has sought to advance and measure its progress to racial equity for many years. I've led several of these efforts, some more effective than others: antiracist professional development, resident assistant training, campus climate surveys, Equity Scorecard , general education reform, etc. Initiatives like these can begin to dismantle institutional racism, or they can further entrench it. In any similarly-minded effort, the key factor is something called "interest convergence."

Interest convergence is a theory coined by the late Derrick Bell, law professor and spiritual godfather to the field of study known as critical race theory. Interest convergence stipulates that black people achieve civil rights victories only when white and black interests converge. The signature example is Brown v. Board of Education, which happened because it advanced white interests too, Bell argued. Specifically, desegregation raised the nation's prestige in world politics during the Cold War. Eventually, when interests diverged, the enforcement of civil rights was curtailed: Brown was undercut by later cases that sanctioned segregation for decades. Bell pointed to later affirmative-action triumphs as examples of renewed interest convergence.

Schools and universities are natural sites to observe interest convergence because inequitable access to quality education ensures white social advantage. However, recent dispatches from around the country might lead some to believe that black interests are not only ascendant on college campuses but are absolutely oppressive.

In March, Middlebury College, a small liberal arts school in Vermont, burst onto the national scene with its protest against a lecture by Charles Murray, co-author of The Bell Curve . A Middlebury professor was assaulted during the protest and later hospitalized for her injury. Earlier this month, students at Claremont McKenna College blocked the entrance to a room where conservative thinker Heather Mac Donald was planning to speak. Her book The War on Cops criticizes the Black Lives Matter movement and pushes the discredited theory of the "Ferguson Effect." Every week seems to bring a similar story of speeches interrupted or canceled on college campuses.

But speakers come and go, and it would be difficult to claim that a single protest is a systemic effort to discriminate against white people. However, campus diversity policies are sometimes misinterpreted as doing just that. Responding to a wave of antiracist student protests over the past two years, most memorably at the University of Missouri and Yale University, colleges and universities have begun to refashion their identities to make room for the secular trinity of equity, diversity, and inclusion. Some of these are indeed systemic efforts — rewriting curriculum, updating tenure and promotion policies, hiring Chief Diversity Officers — meant to change how institutions evaluate themselves, students, and faculty.

Interest convergence helps to explain diversity policies once we understand that institutions will lose more than prestige if they are perceived as unwelcoming or even hostile to students of color. Any college president can attest to how crucial the tuition of international students is to their institution's bottom line. A recent survey indicated that almost 40 percent of US colleges report declines in applications from international students, chiefly those from Middle Eastern nations, China, and India. Many students submitted applications before recent spikes in hate crimes and hate-group activity and before the current administration's efforts to make good on its promise to ban travel from six Muslim nations. Thus, the drop in yield of international students actually enrolling may be steeper than that of applications. Quite simply, it is in an institution's financial interest not to be seen as racist.

Institutions like the University of Oklahoma are hoping that changes they have already put into place will improve campus climate. In response to a 2015 viral video of fraternity members singing a racist song, OU implemented mandatory "diversity experience trainings" for its first-year students the following year. This initiative has not been well-received by all. Complaints arrived from members of OU's College Republicans, who charged that the trainings made them feel "uncomfortable" and forced "them to be 'politically correct.'" These comments might resemble the kinds of complaints that Candice Jackson's office will need to make sense of.

However, when the "OU Freshmen Diversity Experience" touts its professional benefits over its potential to reduce discrimination, its origin in interest convergence is evident. Diversity skills can be marketed to employers. "Businesses want to hire graduates who understand their role in building a truly inclusive culture," OU explains on the program's site, and so the Experience "uses research-based curriculum to equip students for future employment." Moreover, the training may even hamstring graduates who aren't white men. Researchers found that minority executives (white women and people of color) who promote diversity in the workplace are rated worse by their supervisors than are white men doing the same. The business model for diversity teaches students about cultural preferences and how to avoid offense, but it is ill-equipped to unpack social group power dynamics. This disconnect was painfully brought to life by a recent commercial featuring Kendell Jenner slipping a cold Pepsi into the hand of a white police officer in riot gear — to the cheers of a diverse crowd of protesters.

Students of color can benefit from diversity trainings and curricula, but the outcomes are not uniform and may even be counter-productive. This is because initiatives like OU's Experience were not designed for them or to reduce the discrimination against them. Next fall, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Iowa will roll out its "diversity and inclusion" requirement as part of its general education program. Matthew Bruce, a member of the executive board of the school's Black Student union, bluntly expressed his doubts about the requirement: "I don't necessarily see a course designed for people who are culturally incompetent as empowering students of color." Mandatory courses on "cultural competency" often further stigmatize and isolate students of color.

It's not only administrators whom student leaders work to hold accountable — faculty members have also been called out by students, partly because they are more familiar figures, but also because tenured faculty can seem to be able to get away with anything, including racism. And while student activists and an institution's governing board might find a lot to agree with over diversity-friendly personnel policies, faculty can struggle to locate their place within this kind of interest convergence.

In California, Pomona College entered the spotlight last year because of new diversity and inclusion tenure requirements. Pomona students volunteered examples of practices they would consider tenure-threatening. These included "Teaching an economics course on poverty using only white scholars" and "Saying things that are blatantly rude or disrespectful to students based on their background." Seemingly in response, the Oregon Association of Scholars recently released a report highly critical of what it calls "ideological litmus tests" for faculty hiring and evaluation. It names four Oregon public universities whose diversity policies allegedly violate academic freedom and unfairly target "non-left wing scholars."

Yet many faculty are in favor of personnel policies that reward them for bringing equity, diversity, and inclusion to their profession. Pomona's policy, however, is remarkable because it regards diversity as not "just a plus but a requirement" for tenure , according to Eric A. Hurley, a psychology and Africana studies professor who worked on the policy. At other institutions such as Virginia Tech, faculty "may" account for "diversity and inclusion" in applications for tenure and promotion, but they are not required to do so — a distinction its Provost made sure to emphasize publicly .

Weak diversity policies fail to change the status quo today because they trade binding commitment for symbolism and good intentions.

Interest convergence provides a lens for keener insight into policies that on the surface seem to offer obvious diversity benefits. For example, the Excelsior Scholarship, New York State's plan for free college tuition at its public colleges and universities, provides free tuition in exchange for a promise to attend college full-time, graduate on time, and live and work in New York for as many years as their scholarship was awarded. While the Excelsior Scholarship will no doubt boost college enrollments, its conditions assure that it will disproportionately benefit middle-class families and thus probably widen the racial educational gap — because Pell grants and other aid already pay tuition for poor students. And if the plan is ever broadly perceived as disproportionately benefiting students of color, calls for cutting or eliminating its funding are highly likely.

Might a period be on the horizon when a white student's discomfort in an ethnic studies class verges on a civil rights violation?

An institution might prepare for this day by understanding its diversity policies as naked interest convergence. This will entail making the case that white students and faculty benefit just as much from them as do their peers of color, if not more. But the core argument can no longer be the vague "compelling interest" of diversity. It must be economic. Instead of measuring qualitative outcomes such as "cultural competency" or "cognitive empathy," institutions might measure "salary upon graduation" or "promotions to full professor." Had affirmative action been consistently measured on similar merits, how much white people benefit from it would be common knowledge.

Interest convergence offers the most sobering and viable approach for the contentious issues around diversity and inclusion.

If white interests must continually be met so that they might leave behind a whit of racial justice, then the theory can make the future seem cynical or even hopeless. Interest convergence is not without its critics. Justin Driver has challenged it on multiple grounds, pointing out its contradictions and the necessary diminishment of black agency in its insistence upon the permanence of racism. But so much depends on our capacity to be open to the idea. Even if enduring white supremacy is a foregone conclusion, that fact does not preclude the possibility of individual righteous action, which is its own liberation.

David Shih is an associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Follow him @ProfessorShih .

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• civil rights
• white students

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Article contents

Political convergence: an empirical assessment.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

When detente emerged as the focal point of American foreign policy in the early 1970's, the issue of whether or not communist political systems were becoming more like Western democracies over time (i.e., “converging”) was raised. This paper assesses political scientists' efforts to analyze such a hypotheses, particularly the implication that socioeconomic changes called “development” and “modernization” co-vary with fundamental political change. After identifying three components of the convergence hypothesis—pluralism, nationalism, and legitimacy—the author examines published research for empirical evidence regarding these phenomena. He stresses the similarities and differences of political change among communist states. Convergence theory is found to be inadequate in most respects for understanding the relationships between socioeconomic and political changes, although various political trends (such as pluralization) are evident.

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1 Meyer , , “Theories of Convergence,” in Johnson , Chalmers , ed., Change in Communist Systems ( Stanford: Stanford University Press 1970 ), 337 Google Scholar .

2 See, for instance, Jan Tinbergen , “Do Communist and Free Economies Show a Converging Pattern?” in Bornstein , Morris , ed., Comparative Economic Systems ( Homewood, LLL. : Dorsey 1965 ), 455 –64 Google Scholar .

3 Black , , The Dynamics of Modernization ( New York : Harper and Row 1966 ), 49 Google Scholar .

4 Huntington , Samuel P. and Brzezinski , Zbigniew , Political Power: USA/USSR ( New York : Viking Press 1964 ) Google Scholar .

5 Meyer , , “USSR Incorporated,” in Treadgold , Donald W. , ed., The Development of the USSR ( Seattle : University of Washington Press 1964 ) Google Scholar , 21–28; see also Meyer , , The Soviet Political System ( New York : Random House 1965 ) Google Scholar .

6 Brzezinski , , “The Soviet Political System: Transformation or Degeneration,” Problems of Communism (January-February 1966 ) Google Scholar .

7 Brzezinski , , ed, Dilemmas of Change in Soviet Politics ( New York : Columbia University Press 1969 ), 30 – 34 Google Scholar .

8 Fainsod, “Roads to the Future,” ibid. , 134.

9 Mehnert , , “Westerly Winds Over Eastern Europe,” in London , Kurt , ed., Eastern Europe in Transition ( Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press 1966 ), 309 –23 Google Scholar .

10 Kassof , , “The Future of Soviet Society,” in Kassof , , ed., Prospects for Soviet Society ( New York : Praeger 1968 ), 504 –5 Google Scholar .

11 Hough , Jerry , “The Soviet System: Petrification of Pluralism,” Problems of Communism XXI (March-April 1972 ) Google Scholar , Matejko , Alexander , Social Change and Stratification in Eastern Tiurope ( New York : Praeger 1974 ) Google Scholar .

12 Daniels , , “Soviet Politics Since Khrushchev,” in Strong , John W. , ed., The Soviet Union Under Brezhnev and Kosygin ( New York : Van Nostrand Reinhold 1971 ), 22 – 23 Google Scholar .

13 Skilling , and Griffiths , , eds., Interest Groups in Soviet Politics ( Princeton : Princeton University Press 1971 ) Google Scholar ; see particularly Skilling's article “Groups in Soviet Politics: Some Hypotheses.” Also interesting is Stewart , Philip D. , “Soviet Interest Groups and the Policy Process,” World Politics , XXII (October 1969 ) Google Scholar .

14 For example, see Kautsky , John H. , Political Change in Underdeveloped Countries ( New York : Wiley 1963 ), 79 – 89 Google Scholar . My article, “The Early Success of Ostpolitik: An Eastern European Perspective,” World Affairs , Vol. 138 (Summer 1975 ), 32 – 50 Google Scholar , discusses increasing contact with Western Europe and the independence from Soviet positions.

15 Gilison , , British and Soviet Politics: A Study of Legitimacy and Convergence ( Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press 1972 ) Google Scholar .

16 Ibid. , XII.

17 Ibid. , 37.

18 Ibid. , 93.

19 Ibid. , 105.

20 Ibid. , 169.

21 See for instance, Korbonski , Andrzej , “Liberalization Processes,” in MesaLago , Carmelo and Beck , Carl eds., Comparative Socialist Systems ( Pittsburgh : University of Pittsburgh Center for International Studies 1975 ), 192 – 214 Google Scholar .

22 Ibid. , 196.

23 These data are available in machine-readable form from the Eastern European Elite Archive, University of Pittsburgh, William Jarzabek, archivist.

24 Beck , , “Leadership Attributes in Eastern Europe: The Effect of Country and Time,” in Beck , and others , , Comparative Communist Political Leadership ( New York : McKay 1973 ) 126 –27 Google Scholar

25 Ludz , , The Changing Party Elite in East Germany ( Cambridge : The MIT Press 1972 ), 321 Google Scholar .

26 Nelson, “Background Characteristics of Local Communist Elites,” forthcoming in Polity (1978). My assessment of the Romanian political elite at a local level was based upon numerous interviews with such individuals in four counties (judete).

27 Ludz (fn. 25), 321.

28 Beck (fn. 24), 129.

29 Ibid. , 143.

30 Nelson , , “Socio-economic and Political Change in Communist Europe,” International Studies Quarterly XXI (June 1977 ), 359 –88 CrossRef Google Scholar .

31 These data are available at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Publications from these data include, among others, Philip Jacob and others, Values and the Active Community ( New York : Free Press 1971 ) Google Scholar , Teune , Henry and Ostrowski , Krystof , “Political Systems as Residual Variables,” Comparative Political Studies , VI (April 1973 ), 3 – 21 CrossRef Google Scholar .

32 See Zaninovich, “Elites and Citizenry in Yugoslav Society: A Study of Value Differentiation,” in Beck (fn. 24), 226–97; Triska and Barbie, “Evaluating Citizen Performance on the Community Level,” paper delivered at the 1975 meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco.

33 Zaninovich (fn. 32), 285.

34 Triska and Barbie (fn. 32), 46.

35 Zaninovich (fn. 32), 285.

36 Lodge , , “Soviet Elite Participatory Attitudes in the Post-Stalin Period,” American Political Science Review , Vol. 62 (September 1968 ), 827 –39 CrossRef Google Scholar ; and “Attitudinal Cleavages Within the Soviet Political Leadership,” in Beck (fn. 24), 202–25.

37 Lodge, “Soviet Elite Participatory Attitudes” (fn. 36), 838.

38 Nelson , , “Sub-National Political Elites in a Communist System,” East European Quarterly X (December 1976 ), 459 –94 Google Scholar .

39 Schwartz , and Keech , , “Group Influence and the Policy Process in the Soviet Union,” American Political Science Review , Vol. 62 (September 1968 ), 840 –51 CrossRef Google Scholar ; and “Public Influence and Educational Policy in the Soviet Union,” in Kanet , Roger E. , ed., The Behavioral Revolution and Communist Studies ( New York : Free Press 1971 ), 151 –86 Google Scholar .

40 Ibid. , 152.

41 Ibid. , 181.

42 Tarkowski , , “A Study of the Decisional Process in Rolnowo Powiat,” Polish Sociological Bulletin , XVI , No. 2 ( 1967 ), 89 – 96 Google Scholar .

43 Ibid. , 93–94.

44 Pirages , , “Socio-economic Development and Political Access in the Communist Party-States,” in Triska , Jan F. , ed., Communist Party-States ( Indianapolis : Bobbs-Merrill 1969 ), 249 –81 Google Scholar .

45 Ibid. , 273.

46 Brzezinski , , The Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict ( Cambridge : Harvard University Press 1967 ), IX Google Scholar .

47 Lowenthal , Richard , World Communism: The Disintegration of a Secular Faith ( New York : Oxford University Press 1966 ) Google Scholar .

48 Lendvai , Paul , Eagles in Cobwebs ( New York : Doubleday-Anchor 1969 ), 447 Google Scholar .

49 Kintner , and Klaiber , , Eastern Europe and European Security ( New York : Dunellen 1971 ), 254 Google Scholar .

50 Conformity to Soviet policies was also operationalized through the construction of an index from many component measurements, as described Ibid. , chap. 13.

51 Ibid. , 255.

52 Tucker , , “Measuring Cohesion in the International Communist Movement, 1957–1970,” mimeo ( Indiana University , February 1973 ), 38 Google Scholar .

53 Ibid. , 23, 29.

54 Hopmann, “The Effects of International Conflict and Detente on Cohesion in the Communist System,” in Kanet (fn. 39), 335.

55 Triska and Johnson, “Political Development and Political Change,” in Mesa-Lago and Beck (fn. 21), 267.

56 Ibid. , 282.

57 For a study of the political role played by schools in communist states, see Grant , Nigel , Society, Schools and Progress in Eastern Europe ( New York : Pergamon Press 1969 ) Google Scholar esp. chap. 5. Perhaps the most complete treatment of socialization efforts in the U.S.S.R. is Soviet Political Indoctrination by Hollander , Gayle D. ( New York : Praeger 1972 ) Google Scholar . The best country-specific study of political education is Georgeoff , Peter John , The Social Education of Bulgarian Youth ( Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press 1968 ) Google Scholar .

58 Zaninovich (fn. 32), 272.

59 Ibid. , 248.

60 Ibid. , 258–67.

61 Cary , , “Political Socialization of Soviet Youth and the Building of Communism,” in Bertsch , Gary K. and Ganschow , Thomas W. , eds., Comparative Communism ( San Francisco : Freeman & Co. 1976 ), 289 –99 Google Scholar .

62 Inkeles , Alex and Bauer , Raymond , The Soviet Citizen ( New York : Atheneum 1968 ) Google Scholar .

63 Ibid. , chap. X.

64 Ulc, Politics in Czechoslovakia ( San Francisco : W. H. Freeman 1974 ) Google Scholar .

65 Ibid. , 9.

66 Ibid. , 19.

67 Ibid. , 23.

68 Nelson (fn. 30).

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• Volume 30, Issue 3
• Daniel N. Nelson (a1)
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/2009873

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Committee on Key Challenge Areas for Convergence and Health; Board on Life Sciences; Division on Earth and Life Studies; National Research Council. Convergence: Facilitating Transdisciplinary Integration of Life Sciences, Physical Sciences, Engineering, and Beyond. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2014 Jun 16.

Convergence: Facilitating Transdisciplinary Integration of Life Sciences, Physical Sciences, Engineering, and Beyond.

• Hardcopy Version at National Academies Press

3 Convergence Is Informed by Research Areas with Broad Scope

Many of the obstacles to effective convergence discussed in Chapter 4 have as much to do with interpersonal interactions as they do with science at the boundaries between disciplines. As a result, social and behavioral scientists who study human interactions, learning, collaboration, and communication as well interdisciplinary scholars who study new forms of knowledge creation and institutional structures and strategies have furnished valuable insights into the process of convergence and strategies to foster it.

3.1. TERMINOLOGY AND CONCEPTS

Convergence has characteristics in common with other terms used to capture the concept of research that spans disciplines. A foundation of research from social sciences, humanities, organizational theory, higher education studies, and studies of science and technology in society has deepened understanding of different kinds of integration defined in concepts of transdisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and multidisciplinarity. Although they have been understood in multiple ways by different groups, a core vocabulary is now accepted and consensus based within these research communities. It forms a basis of understanding of the challenges and implications that combining inputs presents, including theories, data, models, and methods from diverse disciplines. These definitions, which are not meant to be absolute, to be one size fits all, or to indicate the superiority of one mode over another, appear in Box 3-1 . As evident from the descriptions, many defining characteristics of convergence are similar or even identical to defining traits of transdisciplinarity, key among them merging of distinct and diverse approaches into a unified whole. The merging of expertise from fields of engineering with fields of physical and life sciences in order to create a new systems framework for integrative cancer biology is one example—bringing together areas such as experimental biology, computational modeling, and imaging technology.

Definitions. The academic community that studies the process of research has developed terminology to describe different forms of knowledge creation within and across disciplines. For the purpose of this report and to provide a structure for discussions, (more...)

Tremendous advances in knowledge and understanding have come from discipline-based scholars, and research within disciplines will continue to contribute to the advancement of knowledge. While there is evidence that incorporation of inputs from diverse fields of inquiry may increase the likelihood of creative results, this does not mean research combining diverse inputs is on an evolutionary or deterministic path. Scientific advance has always been, and will continue to be, a combination of results from a multitude of incremental advances in knowledge and their verification with occasional notable breakthroughs of many different origins and arising from many different modes of knowledge creation: examples include serendipitous discoveries, eureka flashes of insight by individuals, and powerful integrations of knowledge from diverse fields by individuals and by teams. One challenge is to identify and understand the factors that influence the outcomes of research which successfully integrate diverse inputs, whether labeled interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, or convergent. Another is to recognize that multiple types of approaches—including unidisciplinary, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary—may occur simultaneously in a field or in an initiative because of the complex array of activities its participants undertake and diverse institutional contexts. As a result, disciplinary and interdisciplinary units, such as research centers, play complementary roles within many academic organizations.

3.2. MANY FACTORS AFFECT THE SUCCESS OF INTEGRATIVE AND COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH

Individual disciplines are associated with patterns of training and socialization, the ways that research questions are formulated, the methods and conceptual models used to address those questions, and the manner in which knowledge is communicated. They help to promote instruction, research, scholarship, and assessment for their fields. Prior investigators have explored the nature of disciplines and characterized some of their similarities and differences. For example, Becher (1994) identified fields as falling into intellectual clusters consisting of the natural sciences, science-based professions, humanities and social sciences, and social professions. But even within what might be categorized as basic sciences, characteristics typical of research conducted by a mathematician (often working singly or with one or two others, and using theoretical and computational resources) and a chemist (often working as part of team of senior investigators, postdoctoral researchers, graduate students, and technicians and requiring a range of chemicals, instruments, and other equipment) can vary in significant ways.

In a university setting, discipline-based departments typically form the bedrock organizational structure. These units have a tradition of autonomy. However, over the course of the 20th century, a substantial intellectual history of inter- and transdisciplinary research and education arose. This history extends from problem-oriented research at the Social Science Research Council in the 1920s to large-scale interdisciplinary initiatives such as the Manhattan Project in the 1940s to the rise of new interdisciplinary fields in such diverse areas as molecular biology, women's studies, urban studies, environmental studies, and clinical and translational science. The scope of activities is wide: from the daily borrowing of tools, methods, and concepts across disciplinary boundaries to projects and programs focused on complex societal and intellectual questions, to the formation of new fields, interdisciplines, and transcending “transdisciplinary” paradigms. In the latter half of the 20th century, boundary-crossing also became a recognized characteristic of knowledge production that was permeating disciplines, not simply a peripheral interest at the edges of “normal” work. The literature on institutional change expanded in kind, with heightened attention to new organizational structures and management strategies along with new models of curriculum and training. The literature on epistemological foundations of knowledge expanded in turn, fostering new understandings of cognitive integration while calling for expanded criteria of evaluation beyond discipline-based metrics. Interdisciplinarity and collaboration also became increasingly entwined, especially in scientific disciplines.

The amount of collaborative research that is undertaken (as captured by simple but imperfect metrics such as coauthored journal papers) varies by field but has shown a pronounced increase over time. Science and Engineering Indicators 2012 ( NSF 2012 ) indicated that 67 percent of science and engineering (S&E) articles were coauthored in 2010 and papers across all S&E fields had an average of 5.6 authors. Field-specific differences in degree of interaction persist, though. The report noted that “the average number of authors per paper more than quadrupled [over the period from 1990 to 2010] in astronomy (3.1 to 13.8) and doubled in physics (4.5 to 10.1). Growth in the average number of coauthors was slowest in the social sciences (from 1.6 authors per paper in 1990 to 2.1 in 2010) and in mathematics (from 1.7 to 2.2)” ( NSF 2012 , pp. 5-35). These results echo the findings of a study of universities in Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom in which the authors observed that 96 percent of articles published by faculty in the “science” cluster were coauthored, compared to 14 percent of articles in the “arts” cluster, and that the average number of paper coauthors was larger for the sciences ( Lewis et al. 2012 ). There is also some evidence that the trend toward interdisciplinary research may reflect expansion of collaboration into fairly closely related scientific disciplines ( Porter and Rafols 2009 ). However, it is clear that the number of authors per paper and coauthorship per se does not necessarily indicate interdisciplinary collaboation, nor does it substitute for more complex descriptions of the substance of the work itself. Moreover, particular disciplines may dominate, and standard databases do not necessarily account for the emergence of new interests and fields ( Wagner et al. 2011 ).

While heterogeneity of fields can increase combinatorial opportunities and contribute to the success of a research project by bringing together diverse insights, such differences may also increase tensions among members ( Boardman and Bozeman 2006 ; Nooteboom et al. 2007 ; Disis and Slattery 2010 ). Since scientists from different disciplines are likely to have different networks of peers, to participate in different conferences, and to publish in different journals, their weaker social bonds may increase the difficulty of developing goal interdependence and a sense of trust ( Cummings and Kiesler 2005 ). At least one study has found that a graph of “cognitive distance” and collaboration success takes the form of an inverted U, whereby optimal distance balances the benefits of knowledge diversity with the barrier to finding common collaborative ground ( Nooteboom et al. 2007 ). This research focused on collaborative alliances among technology firms using measures such as patent data; thus, the extent to which the findings can be extended to academic researchers remains unclear. A survey of collaborative research experiences of academic investigators concluded that multidisciplinarity did not have a significant effect on collaboration success, but that outcome measures were negatively impacted when collaborations spanned multiple universities because of reduced opportunities for close coordination ( Cummings and Kiesler 2005 ). However, the survey found no negative impact on projects that involved development of tools such as software, reflecting the complexity of factors involved in studying collaborative research.

The nature of the research question, norms among the fields involved, and individual characteristics and experiences of participants all influence outcomes in addition to institutional factors. Figure 3-1 summarizes the multiple factors that are involved. In Creating Interdisciplinary Campus Cultures ( Klein 2010b ), Klein also presents an overview of Barriers and Disincentives to Interdisciplinarity, as well as Facilitating Strategies and Mechanisms that are relevant to those that confront convergence initiatives ( Klein 2010b , Tables 3.1 and 3.2).

Factors influencing the effectiveness of transdisciplinary science initiatives. SOURCE: Adpated and reprinted from Stokols et al. 2008, with permission from Elsevier.

The integration of disciplines that start from a point of fewer shared cultural characteristics would be expected to provide additional tensions that would need to be resolved, be it within a single laboratory or across a multi-investigator or multi-organizational team. For example, certain fields in the humanities and social sciences are dominated by individual scholars rather than structured into group laboratories, make greater use of single-author publications, draw largely on qualitative analysis, or have other disciplinary characteristics that may be less familiar to researchers practicing in the life, physical, medical and engineering sciences. The committee emphasizes that these differences do not mean that insights from these fields should not be integrated in convergent research, but that greater levels of cognitive dissonance among participants and greater starting differences in areas such as faculty expectations and organizational structures may factor in strategies used to support convergent initiatives. This caveat is affirmed in the formal distinction between Broad and Narrow Interdisciplinarity ( Klein 2010a ).

Despite the challenges recognized here, convergence efforts that merge insights from across life, physical, medical, and engineering fields integrate science disciplines that have several characteristics in common. This shared foundation helps provide a starting platform for development of the multilingual capacity and integrated research culture needed for convergence.

• Research design and data collection : Disciplines of life, physical, medical, and engineering sciences commonly draw on quantitative experimental data analysis and make use of individual case-study analysis or development of new theory less often than humanities and social sciences. Although there is a tradition of publishing clinical case studies in medical literature, a significant amount of basic biomedical research is undertaken by academic medical centers and a third of faculty at these centers report that they conduct basic science studies ( Zinner and Campbell 2009 ).
• Forms of knowledge dissemination : Publication of peer-reviewed journal articles is a primary method of sharing research advances in these disciplines and is an important consideration in career advancement. Emphasis is also placed on participation in conferences as a forum in which developments may be shared prior to formal publication. Science and engineering disciplines vary in the relative weights given to different forms of knowledge sharing and in the details of article and conference practices, but together they share a base of norms on what it means to conduct and publish research.
• Engagement in knowledge-transfer activities : Although the extent varies, science and engineering disciplines also engage in knowledge dissemination through the generation of patents. For example, a study of the curricula vitae of 1,200 scientists affiliated with Department of Defense, Department of Energy, and NSF research centers found that mean patent rates were higher in computer science, engineering, and physical science fields than in biological science, although these fields were all higher than social science and humanities ( Dietz and Bozeman 2005 ). In 2012, 96 percent of the U.S. journal article citations in issued patents were in five areas: biological sciences, medical sciences, chemistry, physics, and engineering. Biotechnology patents also made up the largest percentage of patents granted to U.S. universities in 2012 ( NSF 2014 ).
• Patterns of coauthorship and collaboration : As discussed above, a majority of publications in science and engineering disciplines are now coauthored, although there remain disciplinary differences in the typical numbers of coauthors or number of disciplines cited in a given article. As noted earlier, coauthorship alone is not an adequate indication of the kinds of knowledge integration necessary for transdisciplinary collaboration, but may serve as a simplistic indicator of norms within these fields.
• Traditions of open sharing as well as competition : Some disciplines have a tradition of depositing prepublication papers in open-access repositories (such as arXiv for physics and mathematics) or making use of open-source development strategies (for example, in the Linux operating system in the computational sciences). 1 In life sciences, norms as well as funding agency requirements call for the deposition of biological data such as nucleic-acid sequences and protein structures in databases such as GenBank or the Protein Data Bank, respectively, where the information is accessible to all researchers. However, legal questions surrounding patient consent and privacy complicate clinical information sharing in the medical field. Moreover, although there are both traditions and requirements for data sharing, competition to understand and make use of data is an important characteristic in many science fields.

Multiple case studies of interdisciplinary and collaborative research exist, particularly in the context of National Science Foundation (NSF)- and National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded center programs. These case studies can provide further insight to inform the process of convergence in organizations. Examples include the following:

• Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence Program (NSF) : An analysis of 62 collaborations that received 3-year support through an NSF program in 1998-1999 suggested that collaborations involving investigators at multiple universities were associated with lower positive outcomes compared to single-university collaborations. Investigators reported a number of practical barriers to multiuniversity projects, including different university calendars and teaching schedules and negotiations over budgets and intellectual property. Institution-spanning collaborations were associated with reduced opportunities for information-sharing and coordination mechanisms such as face-to-face interactions, regular project meetings, co-taught courses, and direct faculty supervision of participating students, and the use of technology such as email did not fully overcome these barriers. The study suggested a role for longer-term funding for complex collaborations that recognizes the effort involved in undertaking such projects and the need for coordinating infrastructure ( Cummings and Kiesler 2005 ).
• Transdisciplinary Research on Energetics and Cancer Centers (TREC) and Transdisciplinary Tobacco Research Use Centers (TTURCs) (NIH) : To conduct an early-stage evaluation of centers in the NIH-funded TREC program, researchers developed a survey that analyzed participating investigators' orientations toward uni-, multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinarity and evaluated characteristics of proposals submitted for program development funds. The study reported that “perceptions of greater institutional resources at their TREC centers were related to a more positive outlook for a variety of collaborative processes and outcomes” ( Hall et al. 2008 , p. S170), suggesting that institutional investment can help facilitate the success of such endeavors. The TREC program includes a supporting coordination center, and it may be interesting to examine how this feature influences program outcomes as part of future assessments. A comparison of TTURC center awards with individual-investigator awards revealed that transdisciplinary teams demonstrated lower productivity during initial years of a project, but appear to become more productive and creative after a 3-year period ( Hall et al. 2012 ), further supporting the longer-term nature of complex, collaborative efforts.
• Comparison of the Texas Air Quality Study (TexAQS) and cross-center collaboration through the National Cooperative Program for Infertility Research (NCPIR) : Environmental scientists from multiple partners (universities, federal laboratories, industry, and state bodies) and multiple sponsors were involved in TexAQS, which operated through a largely informal structure. Those engaged in the project undertook extensive planning, were in frequent communication, agreed on core aspects such as research questions, methodological approaches, and resource sharing, and generally already knew each other and had formed a sense of trust and competence. The NCPIR collaboration, on the other hand, was imposed by the funding agency, involved two geographically distant universities with researchers from basic and clinical fields who did not previously know each other and had different approaches to the research questions, and was in a scientific area (particularly polycystic ovary syndrome) that was still developing. Reportedly, “the result was that individual researchers conducted their own research (some of which was quite successful on an individual level), but the collaborative efforts of the group failed” ( Corley et al. 2006 , p. 991). The study highlighted how partners with similar cultures and relative scientific unity may share information more effectively to facilitate a positive group dynamic, while partners who approach research from different epistemic perspectives can encounter barriers even when more formal structures are in place and the research question falls broadly within the health sciences field.

In addition to case analyses such as those above, the Engineering Research Centers (ERC) program at NSF has created an online guide for scientists and academic leaders to provide information on factors to consider when establishing these centers ( ERC 2014 ). Knowledge obtained from such program materials and from case studies that investigate the association of center attributes with metrics of success provides insights for existing convergence programs and useful guidance for developing new programs. The online Science of Team Science toolkit is another potential resource on the conduct and evaluation of team-based science. It is hosted by NIH ( NCI 2014 ), which has also served as a sponsor and partner for annual Science of Team Science conferences ( http://www.scienceofteamscience.org/ ). The committee especially looks forward to the results of a forthcoming National Research Council (NRC) study that is examining how factors such as team dynamics, team management, and institutional structures and policies affect large and small science teams. This study aims to capture the existing literature and wisdom of practice while illuminating gaps in the evidence base needed to improve team science processes and outcomes and to enhance collaborative research effectiveness. While the study focuses broadly on team-based science, it should provide valuable insights for convergence programs since these entail transdisciplinary integration of expertise, frequently undertaken in teams ( NRC 2014 ). Finally, a large literature exists on how to foster interdisciplinarity in academic settings ( Klein 2010b ); the resources they provide for addressing barriers in organizational culture, faculty development, and program review can be adapted and extended to convergence.

3.3. REVISING STEM EDUCATION WILL FACILITATE CONVERGENCE

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education has emerged as a key factor for facilitating the goals of convergence. The report A New Biology for the 21st Century suggested that “using biology to solve important problems could provide a platform to engage all students in the process of science, and illustrate the excitement and benefits of using science and engineering” ( NRC 2009 , p. 79). Complementing A New Biology 's recommendations on the role of life sciences in addressing broad societal challenges in areas such as food, health, and the environment, Rising Above the Gathering Storm ( NRC 2007 ) and the National Bioeconomy Blueprint ( White House 2012 ) highlighted the role of STEM education and entrepreneurship for enabling the knowledge economy, contributing to U.S. economic competitiveness, and training the bioeconomy workforce. Convergence approaches, which bring expertise from multiple fields to bear on innovative basic discovery as well as applied research and development, align closely with both of these goals. These reports furnish institutions considering how to foster an environment conducive to convergence with models and strategies for embedding this process into education and training programs.

Significant efforts have been made over the past decade to revise STEM education at the undergraduate and graduate levels, with particular emphasis on promoting training that makes interdisciplinary connections, incorporates problem-based learning and access to research opportunities, and draws on validated, evidence-based teaching methods ( NRC 2003 , 2012c ; PCAST 2012 ; Science 2013 ). A recent report from the Association of American Medical Colleges and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Scientific Foundations for Future Physicians ( AAMC and HHMI 2009 ), and new revisions to the medical school admission test, MCAT 2015 , echo this trend. The revisions focus on demonstrating core competency in key biological concepts and draw on the integration of several fields, rather than on testing specific courses or disciplines in isolation. As the committee heard during its workshop, the environment provided by undergraduate liberal arts colleges and small, STEM-focused schools already models teaching and learning strategies that support the goals of convergence, through institutional policies that encourage faculty to develop new methods of teaching that span disciplines and because smaller physical size fosters random interactions that can lead to unexpected collaborations. These colleges send more students on to graduate training programs than would be expected based on their size (D. Singer 2013 ).

Revisions to STEM education also need to address the needs of the future workforce. At graduate and professional levels, the life sciences and biomedical workforce is diverse and continues to grow. Based on 2006 data, the biomedical research workforce included approximately 126,000 U.S. doctoral degree holders (approximately 64 percent male and 36 percent female) and over 63,000 foreign trained scientists. Twenty-six thousand were serving as postdoctoral fellows and an additional 25,000 were graduate students ( NRC 2011b ). Between 2000 and 2009, the largest increase in awarded science and engineering doctorates occurred in biological/agricultural sciences, medical/other life sciences, and engineering. In addition, the biological/biomedical, health sciences, and engineering areas received the largest allocations of academic research space and the largest new research space construction ( NSF 2014 ). Meanwhile, career paths for science and engineering graduates are continuing to change, with reports on “best practices” and accreditation standards increasingly highlighting the importance of interdisciplinary and collaborative capacity. More than half of those who receive new doctorates across all academic fields now work outside of academia in industry, government, and nonprofit sectors and the number of professional science masters programs is increasing ( NRC 2012a ).

Recent reports have explored additional aspects of STEM education such as who participates in graduate science training, how long degree programs take, what percentage of students complete their degree, what types of training grants and funding sources support students, and what needs and opportunities exist for career paths to the workforce at both master's and doctoral levels. Several insights for fostering convergence emerge from these studies, including the increasing role of interdisciplinary and collaborative work in all stages and types of careers, the need to provide students with information on diverse career paths, the value of understanding of how to put research contributions into a broader context, and the role of skills such as communication and teamwork ( Wendler et al. 2010 ; Wendler et al. 2012 ; NRC 2011c , 2012a , 2012d ; NSF 2014 ).

The growing role of interdisciplinarity in the biological sciences, in particular, was highlighted in the most recent edition of the NRC assessment of doctoral programs. The rapid pace of development in biological and health sciences and the increasing interdisciplinary character of programs since the NRC's last assessment (in 1993) posed challenges to its classification methodology, which was largely based on an older taxonomy of discrete academic programs that did not recognize the emergence of new boundary-crossing interests and fields.

The report noted that, “although most doctoral work is still organized in disciplines, scholarly work in doctoral programs increasingly crosses disciplinary boundaries in both content and methods. The committee tried to identify measures of multi- and interdisciplinarity, but it believes it did not address the issue in the depth deserved, nor did the committee discover the kind of relation, if any, between multidisciplinarity and the perceived quality of doctoral programs” ( NRC 2011c , pp. 105-106), concluding that this issue should be dealt with more fully in subsequent editions.

Viewed together, these and other reports affirm that possession of skill sets beyond disciplinary knowledge and research training are increasingly important for the success of students at all levels. A 2013 report on the role of “21st century skills” identified the related skills as clusters of competencies in cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal domains that included aspects like creativity, flexibility, collaboration, and conflict resolution. Although this report was not able to definitively link such skills development during K-12 years with adult outcomes, it recommended expanding the evidence base for how to effectively teach and learn them and how to make them transferable ( NRC 2013 ). The importance of skills that enhance research impact, including “communication, teamwork, relating work to a broader context, and application of research to larger corporate or social purposes” was similarly identified in recent reports on graduate school training from the Educational Testing Service and Council on Graduate Schools ( Wendler et al. 2010 , p. 44) and highlighted by participants at a workshop on graduate study in the chemical sciences ( NRC 2012d ). The types of 21st century skills identified by these reports all align with the skills that will be needed to work in a convergence environment, in which challenges are tackled across disciplinary boundaries through the integration of multiple areas of knowledge, and in which problem-solving may draw on the contributions of multiple team members and multiple partners within and outside of academia.

As academic institutions prepare their students for the research challenges and work environments they will likely encounter in the future and as they design education and training programs that incorporate new evidence-based teaching practices, all of these factors will be relevant. Beyond the reports already mentioned, institutions can also draw on guides such as the roadmap for interdisciplinary learning released by Project Kaleidoscope and the Association of American Colleges and Universities ( Elrod and Roth 2012 ), which provide ideas for strategies to mobilize support, undertake pilot activates, define outcomes and assessment plans, undertake pilot activities, and sustain commitment. Other examples of strategies used by institutions to foster convergence at undergraduate and graduate levels are discussed in Chapter 4 , along with some of the perceived challenges and needs for the future.

3.4. CONVERGENCE MAY CONTRIBUTE TO UNDERSTANDING QUANTIFICATION AND REPRODUCIBILITY IN LIFE SCIENCES

As the chapter highlights, a significant body of research has examined the relationship of individual and organizational factors to integrative and collaborative research and teaching, with insights that might transfer to the goal of fostering convergence. Discussion during the data-gathering workshop illuminated several additional differences in the ways that life scientists and physical scientists or engineers are perceived to approach problem solving, with potential impacts on fundamental research challenges at the frontier of the life, medical, physical, and engineering sciences.

Engineering fields generally approach challenges through quantification, since quantitative understanding of a system enables control. Quantification is becoming increasingly important in the biological sciences as well, and thus biologists increasingly need training in mathematics and computation. However, the living systems of interest in life sciences are complex, adaptive, and often not at equilibrium, making the mathematics required to model, analyze, and understand them extremely sophisticated. For example, modeling the signaling pathway of the epidermal growth factor receptor requires equations that cover 322 components and the 211 reactions in which they are involved ( NRC 2011d ). Effectively integrating an engineering approach to mathematical complexity into life sciences is a major goal for convergence that would help tackle the challenge of understanding and controlling biological systems, with results that would be applicable across questions in health, sustainability, and innovation.

Data reproducibility is another well-recognized challenge in the biomedical sciences. It has received wide attention due to pharmaceutical industry reports that results of published studies on cancer biology and drug targets could not be fully replicated ( Prinz et al. 2011 ; Begley and Ellis 2012 ; related discussions appear in a special collection of Nature articles at nature.com/nature/focus/reproducibility ). Numerous factors contribute to poor result reproducibility. Possible factors that have been suggested include limited ability to fully describe methods in written journal articles, uncharacterized variance in experimental conditions, limitations in preclinical cell culture and animal models, pressure on scientists to publish positive results, low value placed on replicating the results of others, and insufficient statistical expertise or experimental design. This is an area which needs further study in order to address a key stumbling block to research progress. Many believe that life and medical sciences have not focused as extensively as physics and engineering on developing common measurement standards and common guidelines for collecting data from biological samples. In order to move beyond information encoded in individual genomes to translational application, further attention to this challenge of standardization and reproducibility is required. Strategies adapted from the physics and engineering communities can contribute, although the complexity and individual variability of living organisms make measurement challenges in life and medical sciences unique. As one participant in the committee's workshop stated, “Let's figure out how to take the important biological processes and annotate them so that we're not simply accumulating data that's reproducible, but leading to knowledge that's actionable” (Dennis Ausiello, Workshop on Key Challenges in the Implementation of Convergence, September 16-17, 2013, Washington, DC). Convergence holds potential to contribute to the goal of incorporating rigorous measurement and analysis toolkits into life sciences while continuing to draw on the empiricism and observation that have formed the foundation for many life sciences advances of the past.

3.5. CONVERGENCE EXTENDS BEYOND THE INTEGRATION OF LIFE SCIENCES, PHYSICAL SCIENCES, MEDICINE, AND ENGINEERING

Most of the examples of convergence programs and institutes discussed in Chapter 4 were established around a core subset of life, physical, medical, and engineering sciences. However, many of the challenges these programs report encountering and strategies they have employed to foster convergence reinforce existing recommendations on how to nurture research that spans disciplinary boundaries more broadly. Where applicable, this report highlights similarities where information from convergence programs echoes such prior findings, notes aspects that may be specific to the combination of life, physical, medical, and engineering fields, and suggests how they affect challenges encountered in fostering convergence.

There is widespread recognition among scientists that addressing critical challenges in health, energy, and sustainability at both the research and application stages draws on contributions from disciplines beyond the life, physical, engineering, and medical sciences. Well-established areas such as cognitive neuroscience merge research in cellular biology and neural circuitry with behavioral studies to better understand complex human processes such as emotion. The economic and social sciences also make crucial contributions to the translation of innovations from fundamental research to widespread adoption. For example, “you can get engineers and use bio-fuels to build a great car, but people still have to buy it, it has to be priced. Behavior has got to play a big role. So I think that a true, complete solution to many of the problems we care about should include economics, psychology, behavior, sociology” (Carl Simon, Workshop on Key Challenges in the Implementation of Convergence, September 16-17, 2013, Washington, DC). The extent to which disciplines such as the social and economic sciences and humanities are being increasingly incorporated into an expanded concept of convergence and what additional cultural and institutional barriers this will present remains a matter of discussion, although the committee's view is that these fields have important insights to contribute in many areas of discovery and application.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has recently announced that the source code for its supported projects will be available in the DARPA Open Catalog ( DARPA 2014 ), reflecting this ethos within the software development community.

• Cite this Page Committee on Key Challenge Areas for Convergence and Health; Board on Life Sciences; Division on Earth and Life Studies; National Research Council. Convergence: Facilitating Transdisciplinary Integration of Life Sciences, Physical Sciences, Engineering, and Beyond. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2014 Jun 16. 3, Convergence Is Informed by Research Areas with Broad Scope.
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• TERMINOLOGY AND CONCEPTS
• MANY FACTORS AFFECT THE SUCCESS OF INTEGRATIVE AND COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH
• REVISING STEM EDUCATION WILL FACILITATE CONVERGENCE
• CONVERGENCE MAY CONTRIBUTE TO UNDERSTANDING QUANTIFICATION AND REPRODUCIBILITY IN LIFE SCIENCES
• CONVERGENCE EXTENDS BEYOND THE INTEGRATION OF LIFE SCIENCES, PHYSICAL SCIENCES, MEDICINE, AND ENGINEERING

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Convergence Theory

… a core concept in Policy Analysis and Process and Atlas101

Concept description

Ashley Crossman (reference below) describes convergence theory as the presumption that “as nations move from the early stages of industrialization toward becoming fully industrialized, they begin to resemble other industrialized societies in terms of societal norms and technology.”

She writes:

“The characteristics of these nations effectively converge. Eventually and ultimately, this could lead to a unified global culture, if nothing impeded the process.

“Convergence theory has its roots in the functionalist perspective of economics which assumes that societies have certain requirements that must be met if they are to survive and operate effectively.

“Convergence theory became popular in the 1960s when it was formulated by the University of California, Berkeley Professor of Economics Clark Kerr. Some theorists have since expounded upon Kerr’s original premise with the opinion that industrialized nations may become more alike in some ways than in others. Convergence theory is not an across-the-board transformation because although technologies may be shared, it’s not as likely that more fundamental aspects of life such as religion and politics would necessarily converge, though they may.

“Convergence theory is also sometimes referred to as the “catch-up effect.” When technology is introduced to nations still in the early stages of industrialization, money from other nations may pour in to develop and take advantage of this opportunity. These nations may become more accessible and susceptible to international markets. This allows them to “catch up” with more advanced nations.

“Convergence theory is especially important in public policy as many nations join multinational governance structures and follow best practices such as those established by the OECD.”

Atlas topic, subject, and course

Problem Definition and Agenda Setting (core topic) in Policy Analysis and Process  and Atlas101 Policy Analysis and Process .

Ashley Crossman (2017). What is Convergence Theory? How Convergence Affects Developing Nations,” ThoughtCo, at https://www.thoughtco.com/convergence-theory-3026158 , accessed 4 September 2018.

Page created by: Alec Wreford and Ian Clark, last modified 4 September 2018.

Image:  Quora, Does the Convergence theory in economics actually work in real life or is it essentially just a theory? at https://www.quora.com/Does-the-Convergence-theory-in-economics-actually-work-in-real-life-or-is-it-essentially-just-a-theory , accessed 4 September 2018.

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A model-adaptive random search actor critic: convergence analysis and inventory-control case studies

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• Yuehan Luo 1 ,
• Jiaqiao Hu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9999-672X 1   na1 &
• Abhijit Gosavi 2   na1  

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Reinforcement learning (RL) is an exciting area within the domain of Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) in which the underlying optimization problem is solved either in a simulator of the real-world system or via direct interaction with the real-world system, when its underlying transition probabilities are difficult to estimate. The latter is commonly true of large-scale, real-world MDPs with complex underlying transition dynamics. RL is currently being widely researched in the world of medicine/neuroscience after some spectacular success stories demonstrating super-human behavior in computer games. In this paper, we propose a new actor-critic-based RL algorithm for approximately solving continuous state/action MDPs in which the Q -function is used for the critic, in contrast to the usual value function of dynamic programming, and a new model-adaptive random search (MARS) method is employed for the actor. The algorithm is formulated using function approximation and referred to as the MARS actor critic. Further, a discretized version of the same algorithm using exemplars or representative state-action pairs, which is suitable for a tabular setting and referred to as the Tabular Exemplar Approximation (TEA) version, is also proposed. The MARS version is analyzed mathematically for its convergence properties using a two timescale approach. Both the MARS and the TEA versions are tested numerically: the MARS version is tested on a classical inventory-control problem, while the TEA version is tested on a real-world case study from the domain of remanufacturing.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the two anonymous reviewers and the editor for offering numerous suggestions to improve this work in terms of clarity and technical details. In particular, we thank the first reviewer for a significantly improved presentation of the algorithm and the mathematical analysis and the second reviewer for a significantly improved literature review and for improved technical clarity throughout the paper.

This study was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation under grants CMMI-2027452 and CMMI-2027527.

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Jiaqiao Hu and Abhijit Gosavi have contributed equally to this work.

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Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY, 11794, USA

Yuehan Luo & Jiaqiao Hu

Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO, 65401, USA

Abhijit Gosavi

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Correspondence to Jiaqiao Hu .

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Luo, Y., Hu, J. & Gosavi, A. A model-adaptive random search actor critic: convergence analysis and inventory-control case studies. Ann Oper Res (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-024-06284-y

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Received : 09 January 2024

Accepted : 09 September 2024

Published : 23 September 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-024-06284-y

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