Working Together in the Space between Expertise and Ignorance

This paper examines the phenomenon of interdisciplinary collaboration to critically appraise the widespread idea that working together requires the integration of knowledge. We build both on the concepts of common ground/grounding and interactional/contributory expertise to analyze in two case studies how common ground evolves in practice. We find that building common ground is a continuous process of both developing common knowledge and dissecting differences (dependencies) in knowing and of both confirming and questioning legitimacy of experts (positioning own expertise and admitting ignorance). We further discuss the relationship between personal and communal common ground and refine our theorizing in the context of interdisciplinary collaboration by distinguishing grounding activities specific to tasks characterizations.