The social justification of creative ideas: An inductive study of drug discovery teams

In this article we develop a theoretical model illuminating how ideas are socially justified in multidisciplinary teams, a phase after an idea’s generation yet before its implementation. Based on an inductive case study of project teams in a pharmaceutical company, we disentangle a two-step process of social justification, in which ideas are first evaluated among scientists who enact a shared scientific research question (local justification) and then get assessed by those engaging in distinct yet interrelated scientific research questions (global justification). Local justification gears toward evaluating the idea’s potential to yield in new learning and its scientific feasibility. Mechanistically, we observe local justification to unfold as three practices deeply rooted in everyday knowledge work: emulating past experience, modifying individual ideas, and evoking intellectual provocation. As a key insight, we observe the mechanisms of justification then to radically shift when moving from local to globa...