Creating Common Ground
Common ground was defined elsewhere: Defining "Common Ground"
One good rule of thumb in seeking common ground is to make the smallest adjustment possible in concepts or assumptions in order to achieve common ground. Note, though, that the researcher will be seeking common ground after having evaluated insights, and may thus have already had cause to suggest adjustments to concepts or assumptions. [See William H. Newell, “Transdisciplinarity Reconsidered” in Margaret A. Somerville and David Rapport (eds.), Transdisciplinarity: Re-creating Integrated Knowledge. Oxford, England: EOLSS Publishers Co. Ltd., 2000. 42-48. William H. Newell, Ch. 13 “Decision Making in Interdisciplinary Studies” in Göktug Morçöl (ed.) Handbook of Decision Making (New York: CRC Press/Taylor & Francis Group, 2007), 245-264.]
Special note should be made of the word ‘creating’ in the subtitle above. While there are techniques for creating common ground it is nevertheless a creative act in which interdisciplinarians should let their intuition work in concert with their reason. [See Welch, James IV (2007) “The role of intuition in interdisciplinary insight” Issues in Integrative Studies 25, 131-55]
We have identified four key techniques for creating common ground:
Each is discussed at length in Allen Repko, Interdisciplinary Research: Process and theory 2nd ed. (Sage, 2011). Examples of their application (and these strategies are perhaps appreciated in application) are provided there and in Repko, Newell, and Szostak, eds., Case Studies in Interdisciplinary Research (Sage, 2012).
P. Sven Arvidson “Between Phenomenology and Psychology: The Interdisciplinarity of Aron Gurwitsch,”Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 2014, 45 (2), applies these techniques in finding common ground between phenomonological and psychological theory. This paper indeed follows the several steps outlined in Repko, Interdisciplinary Research (2012) , but with emphasis on justifying an interdisciplinary approach, identifying conflicts, finding common ground, and developing a comprehensive understanding. It is an exemplar of how to apply the interdisciplinary research process as outlined in Repko (2012).
These techniques work when authors disagree (or appear to disagree) about how the world works. Such disagreements may or not be embodied in formal theories or concepts. Yet there are other possible sources of disagreement (which of course may work in concert):
Repko and others stress that creating common ground is indeed a creative act: there are strategies to aid this creative act but it nevertheless demands creativity. Frédéric Darbellay , Zoe Moody , Ayuko Sedooka & Gabriela Steffen (2014) "Interdisciplinary Research Boosted by Serendipity," Creativity Research Journal, 26:1, 1-10, DOI: 10.1080/10400419.2014.873653 argue that creativity should receive even more attention within the interdisciplinary research process. The paper stresses the importance of serendipitous discoveries. Serendipity requires breaking free from disciplinary constraints, recognizing novel connections, placing information in a novel context (the paper uses post-it notes as example). Though we have focused on addressing conflicts on this page, the paper reminds us that there is an important role for interdisciplinary analysis in drawing connections among compatible but hitherto unconnected insights.