joint-action

Term introduced by John Shotter .  It refers to actions we engage in with others so that we are unable to say the extent to which we, personally, caused something to happen or the other(s) caused it to happen.  A teacher tries to teach a child to read, but the child does not learn.  Did the teacher cause this problem?  The child?  Or the parents?  It's a joint action in that we cannot attribute the cause of the situation entirely to one person or
another with any degree of confidence or certainty.