linguistic:voice_change
Technology and common ground

Another way to develop common knowledge rests on managers’ ability to act as politicians to manage the power dynamic inside and outside the team. This may reduce members’ hesitancy to share information, leading to enhanced innovation. A study by Gibbs and her colleagues (2021) indicates that managers can also bridge imbalances in situated knowledge during meetings by discussing trivial topics and surfacing taken-for-granted assumptions as a way to elicit differing opinions and hidden knowledge. In one instance, a manager increased dialogue among team members by deliberately refraining from giving people answers in order to encourage them to cooperate and co-create knowledge. Though more difficult than in collocated teams, careful management and co-presence strategies can successfully establish common ground among members of a virtual team.