Motivational Factors in Interdisciplinary Design Collaboration

This study investigates design collaborations in interdisciplinary work settings, where actors from product design, product development, product management, marketing, production, purchasing, and quality units participate in product design processes, with the aim of contributing to both its theoretical understanding and effective management. By bridging research on design collaboration with motivational theory, the study argues that motivation constitutes a critical yet underexplored dimension of interdisciplinary design collaborations. Adopting an interpretivist approach, the research explores the experiences of twenty-five experts from diverse disciplines through semi-structured interviews. The findings identify three sets of motivational factors: (1) design-specific intrinsic motivational factors of collaboration—belief in the project, continuous progress, and continuous learning; (2) relational factors as distinct motivational drivers through constructive conflict and a sense of “we”; and (3) extrinsic factors that condition rather than generate motivation by shaping the context of collaboration. This article proposes a layered model in which intrinsic, relational, and extrinsic factors interact dynamically to sustain collaborative engagement.