The term disciplinarity seems not to have a commonly accepted definition but it relates to a specific field of academic study. The free dictionary defines disciplinarity as the state of being disciplinary. Disciplinary is an adjective related to the branch of learning or knowledge. When talking about a discipline, it is not merely a body of knowledge but also a set of practices by which the knowledge is acquired, confirmed, implemented, preserved, and reproduced.

Post (2009) argues that questions of disciplinarity seek criteria for validating the “eccentric” angle of vision of a particular “intellectual” community in terms of its methodology, subject matter, curriculum or its shared purpose. Disciplinarity involves the education, certification, hiring, and promotion of university professors. Questions of disciplinarity express apprehension about the subordinate status of a “colonized discipline” (James, 1995). Minati and Collen (1997) using the systemic perspective describe disciplinarity as phases or forms of human activity to seek, develop, and produce knowledge. They state that disciplinarity is demonstrated in four forms; singular, multiple, inter-relational, and boundary breaking pursuits.

Universities possess incentives to engage in interdisciplinary approaches in circumstances where the problems resist a solution within the parameters of traditional disciplinary perspective. Many of the universities worldwide have research agendas that keep changing and to be able to meet this changing agenda calls for transformation of knowledge practices on top of complementary changes in the internal organisation of universities and in the composition of external disciplinary institutions.