r Academy of Management Journal

2016, Vol. 59, No. 4, 1308–1338.

http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amj.2013.1214

COORDINATING KNOWLEDGE CREATION IN

MULTIDISCIPLINARY TEAMS: EVIDENCE FROM
EARLY-STAGE DRUG DISCOVERY
SHIKO M. BEN-MENAHEM
GEORG VON KROGH
ZEYNEP ERDEN
ETH Zurich

ANDREAS SCHNEIDER
Ypsomed

Based on a multi-year field study of early-stage drug discovery project teams at a global
pharmaceutical company, this paper examines how multidisciplinary teams engaged in
knowledge creation combine formal and informal coordination mechanisms when faced
with unpredictable interdependencies among specialists’ knowledge domains. While
multidisciplinary teams are critical for knowledge creation in increasingly specialized
work environments, the coordination literature has been divided with respect to the
extent to which such teams rely on formal coordination structures and informal co-
ordination practices. Our findings show that when interdependencies among knowledge
domains are dynamic and unpredictable, specialists design self-managed (sub-)teams
around collectively held assumptions about interdependencies based on incomplete in-
formation (conjectural interdependencies). These team structures establish the grounds
for informal coordination practices that enable specialists to both manage known in-
terdependencies and reveal new interdependencies. Newly revealed interdependencies
among knowledge domains, in turn, promote structural adaptation. Drawing on these
findings, we advance an integrative model explaining how team-based knowledge crea-
tion relies on the mutual constitution of formal coordination structures and informal
coordination practices. The model contributes to theory on organizational design and
practice-based research on coordination in cross-disciplinary knowledge creation.

Organizations increasingly rely on multidisciplin- Jones, & Uzzi, 2007). Understanding how such teams
ary teams for creating high-yielding knowledge1 at effectively coordinate knowledge creation across
the frontier of science and technology (e.g., Hoegl & knowledge domains—i.e., manage interdependencies
Gemuenden, 2001; Singh & Fleming, 2010; Wuchty, among specialists—is a subject of growing importance

Authors contributed equally. This research was supported
by a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation
(SNF 100018-146439).
We thank Scott Sonenshein and three anonymous re-
viewers for their insightful comments and suggestions
throughout the review process. We gratefully acknowledge
Natalie Reid for her editorial assistance and Fabienne
Vukotic for her research assistance. We also thank Vivianna
He, Pursey Heugens, Johannes Meuer, Michaéla Schippers,
Nicole Rosenkranz, Christian Wedl, as well as participants
of the faculty seminar series (Professor Tobias Kretschmer)
at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich for their feed-
back on earlier drafts of this work. We further express our
gratitude to the participants in this study.
1
We apply Liebeskind’s (1996) definition of knowledge as
“information whose validity has been established through
tests of proof” (p. 94). The main purpose of creating knowl-
edge through tests of proof is to reduce uncertainty and en-
hance an actor’s capacity to act (Huber, 1991). Because the
validity of new knowledge can only be established after
the fact, knowledge creation is a fundamentally uncertain
endeavor (Liebeskind, 1996). Organizational knowledge
creation refers to “the process of making available and
amplifying knowledge created by individuals as well as
crystallizing and connecting it to an organization’s knowledge
system” (Nonaka & von Krogh, 2009: 635). This definition
emphasizes that, in an organizational context, knowledge
creation hinges on social interactions and collaboration be-
tween individual actors (e.g., Grant, 1996; Kogut & Zander,
1992; Nonaka, 1994).

1308
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2016 Ben-Menahem, von Krogh, Erden, and Schneider
(e.g., Bruns, 2013; Kotha, George, & Srikanth, 2013;
Majchrzak, More, & Faraj, 2012; von Krogh, Nonaka, &
Rechsteiner, 2012). As the complexity of scientific
problems increases, and as efficiency gains from cu-
mulative learning drive individuals to specialize
(Becker & Murphy, 1992; Jones, 2009), multidisci-
plinary teams increasingly face unpredictable in-
terdependencies among specialists due to high task
uncertainty (i.e., incomplete information about tasks)
(Argote, Turner, & Fichman, 1989; Cardinal, Turner,
Fern, & Burton, 2011; Gardner, Gino, & Staats, 2012).
While it is well established that such conditions pose
massive challenges to coordination of knowledge work
(Ancona & Caldwell, 1992; Cronin & Weingart, 2007;
Dougherty, 1992; Faraj & Sproull, 2000; Mell, van
Knippenberg, & van Ginkel, 2014; Vural, Dahlander, &
George, 2013), scholars have developed conflicting
theories about the role of formal and informal co-
ordination mechanisms in knowledge creation.
Some studies, building on a long tradition of orga-
nizational design research (Galbraith, 1973; Tushman
& Nadler, 1978) and structural contingency theory
(Burton & Obel, 2004; Donaldson, 2001; Thompson,
1967), propose that formally designed team structures
are necessary for effectively coordinating knowledge
intensive work. Such structures specify the grouping
and linking of interdependent organizational members
and prioritize information-processing interactions
(e.g., March & Simon, 1958; Puranam, Raveendran, &
Knudsen, 2012), thus promoting team members’ ability
to coordinate their activities (Bresman & Zellmer-Bruhn,
2013; Bunderson & Boumgarden, 2010). In contrast,
a growing number of studies adopting a practice-based
perspective (Orlikowski, 2000) focus on the coordina-
tion of knowledge work in teams as informally emerg-
ing patterns of interactions enacted through specialists’
everyday practices (e.g., Faraj & Xiao, 2006; Hargadon &
Bechky, 2006; Kellogg, Orlikowski, & Yates, 2006).
These studies generally suggest that formally designed
coordination structures may stifle knowledge creation
(Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009).
The discrepancy between these two perspectives
is symptomatic of a more fundamental disconnect in
the literatures on the formal and informal aspects of
coordination (e.g., Gulati & Puranam, 2009; Soda &
Zaheer, 2012).2 While scholars have noted that this
disconnect limits our understanding of how organi-
zations function (e.g., McEvily, Soda, & Tortoriello,
2
A similar debate on formal and informal aspects of
organization appears in a related stream of literature on
organizational control (e.g., Cardinal, Sitkin, & Long, 2004;
Sitkin, Cardinal, & Bijlsma-Frankema, 2010).
1309
2014; Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009), there is a lack of in-
depth analysis of the process through which formal
coordination structures and informal coordination
practices interact in multidisciplinary knowledge-
creating teams. Without taking these interactions into
account, theory on how teams coordinate knowledge
creation remains incomplete. In particular, it is un-
clear not only how formal structures evolve when
designers of team structures face unpredictable and
changing interdependencies among knowledge do-
mains (Grandori & Soda, 2006; Hülsheger, Anderson, &
Salgado, 2009; Puranam & Raveendran, 2013) but
also how informal coordination practices are shaped
by such evolving formal structures (e.g., McEvily
et al., 2014).
This paper develops theory on how multidisci-
plinary teams engaged in knowledge creation com-
bine formal and informal coordination mechanisms
when faced with unpredictable interdependencies
among specialists’ knowledge domains (Grant, 1996;
Thompson, 1967). We do so by using a longitudinal
qualitative study of early-stage drug discovery teams
at DrugCo,3 a global research-driven pharmaceutical
company. Our analysis illuminates important re-
lationships between formal structures and informal
coordination practices. To disaggregate the knowl-
edge creation process and manage the integration of
specialists’ efforts, multidisciplinary project teams
delegate responsibility for knowledge creation to
dynamic sub-team structures based on conjectures
about interdependencies among knowledge do-
mains. Within these structures, team members enact
their responsibility for knowledge creation through
a set of relatively stable informal coordination prac-
tices, which we conceptualize as anticipatory con-
forming, workflow synchronizing, and cross-domain
triangulating.
From our findings, we develop an integrative
model suggesting that formally designed coordina-
tion structures and informal coordination practices
are mutually constitutive, thus jointly enabling spe-
cialists in multidisciplinary teams to coordinate
their knowledge creation efforts. The model pro-
vides new insights into how formal team structures
establish the grounds for informal practice-based
coordination of specialists’ knowledge creation ac-
tivities (e.g., Bruns, 2013). It also develops an un-
derstanding of how specialized team members’
everyday coordination practices lead them to con-
tinuously uncover new interdependencies among
3
Names of the organization, projects, and individuals
are pseudonyms.
1310 Academy of Management Journal
knowledge domains. These newly revealed interde-
pendencies necessitate a reallocation of responsi-
bilities for knowledge creation, thus driving project
team members to redesign formal team structures.
In advancing this model of how multidisciplinary
teams coordinate the knowledge creation process,
our study offers a much-needed integration of theory
on formal and informal coordination mechanisms
(McEvily et al., 2014; Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009).
LITERATURE REVIEW
Relevant theory and research on coordination of
knowledge creation in multidisciplinary teams can be
grouped into two perspectives (McEvily et al., 2014;
Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009). First, the organizational
design perspective suggests that the division of la-
bor in teams with specialists representing distinct
knowledge domains necessitates the integration of
individual efforts, giving rise to interdependence
among specialists (e.g., Burton & Obel, 2004;
Lawrence & Lorsch, 1967; Thompson, 1967). Building
on classic information processing theory (Galbraith,
1977), organization design scholars argue that the
coordination of efforts from interdependent special-
ists relies on formal structures4 that mandate in-
dividuals’ information provision, relationships, roles,
and responsibilities. Puranam et al. (2012) posit that
formal structures enable coordination by grouping
and prioritizing interactions among organizational
members with epistemic interdependence—that is,
members whose optimal actions depend on their ca-
pacity to predict what other members will do. Thus,
by directing information exchange between interde-
pendent members and enabling them to predict one
another’s actions, formal structures allow specialized
team members to better integrate their individual ef-
fort and prevent coordination failures.
Early organizational design literature poses a sharp
trade-off between the benefits of formal structures in
driving efficiency and control, and the benefits of in-
formal, emergent relationships in driving creativity
and innovation (Burns & Stalker, 1961; Gittell, 2002;
Scott, 1987). Underlying this perspective is a core
assumption in information processing theory that an
4 i.e., dealing with unplanned contingencies and emer-
Although scholars have adopted diverse definitions
of structure, we follow Davis, Eisenhardt, and Bingham
(2009), who conclude that prior definitions “all share an
emphasis on shaping the actions of organizational mem-
bers,” so that “entities are more structured when they
shape more activities of their constituent elements and
thus constrain more action” (2009: 415).
August
organization’s structural design should align the or-
ganization’s capacity for information processing with
the needs for information exchange (Galbraith, 1977;
Tushman & Nadler, 1978). In line with this view, or-
ganization design scholars proposed a structural
contingency theory (Donaldson, 2001; Perrow, 1967;
Thompson, 1967) stipulating that as task uncertainty
increases and interdependencies among special-
ists become less predictable, structural designs with
higher capacities for information processing based on
more extensive interaction become more appropriate
(e.g., Argote, 1982; Burns & Stalker, 1961; Sherman &
Keller, 2011).
Some scholars, however, cast doubt on this trade-
off, suggesting that formal coordination structures
may benefit knowledge creation in uncertain contexts
(e.g., Cardinal, 2001; Jelinek & Schoonhoven, 1990;
Child & McGrath, 2001; von Krogh, Nonaka, &
Rechsteiner, 2012). This argument has strong sup-
port from research demonstrating that formal struc-
tures prompt team members to engage in joint
problem-solving and helping behaviors, thus en-
abling the team to more effectively accomplish highly
uncertain tasks with high information-processing
needs (e.g., Edmondson, 1999, 2003; Valentine &
Edmondson, 2015). Studies also suggest that formal
structures enable teams to innovate by significantly in-
creasing the potential for information sharing among its
members (Bunderson & Boumgarden, 2010) and pro-
moting learning in self-managed teams facing non-
routine tasks (Bresman & Zellmer-Bruhn, 2013). Such
findings are consistent with a more general social sci-
ence notion that formal structural design may enable
coordination, communication, and exchange of knowl-
edge among group members (Lamont & Molnár, 2002).
The second stream of research on coordination
takes a practice perspective, emphasizing the impor-
tance of the informal emergent aspects of coordination
(Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009). This perspective chal-
lenges earlier design approaches, such as structural
contingency theory, for suggesting that coordination
necessitates formal structural designs based on pre-
defined interdependencies (Faraj & Xiao, 2006). A
fundamental argument is that a focus on formal co-
ordination structures obscures the increasing demands
placed on members of post-bureaucratic organizations,
gent interdependencies (Kellogg et al., 2006). In con-
trast to the design perspective, the practice perspective
concentrates on coordination practices as they unfold.
It thus emphasizes the need for a dynamic under-
standing of emergent, adaptive coordination in teams
engaged in knowledge work (Okhuysen & Bechky,
2016 Ben-Menahem, von Krogh, Erden, and Schneider
2009). By exploring coordination practices in the
context of high task uncertainty, widely distributed
expertise, and fluid interdependencies, practice stud-
ies adopting a dynamic view of coordination add im-
portant insights into how teams integrate specialist
knowledge (e.g., Bruns, 2013; Majchrzak et al., 2012).
For example, in a study of expertise coordination
in medical trauma teams facing high uncertainty
from fluctuating patient arrival rates, Faraj and Xiao
(2006) show that complex and highly interdepen-
dent medical work relied on emergent, partially im-
provised coordination practices. Similarly, Bechky
and Okhuysen (2011) show that for unexpected
events, police SWAT teams and film production
crews coordinated expertise by flexibly shifting
roles, reorganizing routines, and reassembling their
work. Kellogg et al.’s (2006) study of a web-based
marketing organization shows that by enacting
a “trading zone,” specialists coordinated their work
across the boundaries of their professional commu-
nities. Within these zones, they made their work
“visible, legible, and aligned” when facing an un-
certain context.
Thus both the organizational design and practice
perspectives offer key insights into the coordination
of knowledge work in team-based structures and the
contingency effect of unpredictability. Yet, as recent
literature reviews show (Kilduff & Brass, 2010;
McEvily et al., 2014; Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009),
research has focused on either the formal or informal
aspects of coordination, whereas “the mechanisms
describing the interplay between formal and in-
formal elements are less well-understood” (McEvily
et al., 2014: 335). As a result, the literature presents
largely static and fragmentary insights into how
specialists coordinate the knowledge creation pro-
cess across knowledge domains.
Specifically, formal structural designs appear crit-
ical for developing predictive knowledge among
specialists in multidisciplinary teams, and thus for
coordinating the integration of their efforts (Puranam
et al., 2012). However, the design literature has
largely overlooked the process whereby coordina-
tion unfolds when interdependencies among spe-
cialists are partly unknown and change unpredictably
(Grandori & Soda, 2006; Puranam & Raveendran,
2013; Sherman & Keller, 2011). Practice-based re-
search offers important insights into how emerging
interdependencies are informally managed under
uncertainty (e.g., Bechky & Okhuysen, 2011; Faraj &
Xiao, 2006). Research in this tradition, however, has
paid little attention to the structural context in
which coordination practices unfold, and overlooks the
1311
possibility that existing formal structures may not
only inhibit but also support the integration of spe-
cialists’ efforts under a variety of unpredictable cir-
cumstances (e.g., Brass, Galaskiewicz, Greve, & Tsai,
2004; Hollenbeck, Ellis, Humphrey, Garza, & Ilgen,
2011; Jelinek & Schoonhoven, 1990; Pennings, 1992).
In line with McEvily et al.’s more general ob-
servation that “it is essential to clarify the condi-
tions under which formal and informal elements
[of organizations] interact” (2014: 333), this study
draws on longitudinal qualitative fieldwork to il-
luminate how formal coordination structures and
informal coordination practices co-evolve. In so
doing, we contribute a more comprehensive un-
derstanding of how knowledge creation is co-
ordinated within multidisciplinary teams facing
unpredictable interdependencies.
RESEARCH DESIGN
Case Selection and Overview
We conducted a single-site case study (Yin, 2003),
which allows for in-depth qualitative investiga-
tion of the coordination process. Our study focused
on early-stage drug discovery projects at DrugCo,
a global pharmaceutical company ranked among the
top 10 firms as measured by revenues and global
market share for therapeutic drugs. Drug discovery
occurs in the first five to six years of a 12- to 15-year
development trajectory from the lab to the market
(Pammolli, Magazzini, & Riccaboni, 2011) and ac-
counts for about one-third (i.e., about $800 to 850
million) of the total cost of bringing a new drug to
market (Paul et al., 2010). Decisions made during this
stage, such as which disease targets to study, are
critical for the overall success of commercializing
a drug (e.g., Munos, 2009; Rishton, 2005).
Our study of early-stage drug discovery project
teams at DrugCo was guided by our interest in learn-
ing how knowledge creation is coordinated in
a context where intense task uncertainty involves
unpredictable interdependencies among knowl-
edge domains. DrugCo is a prototype of large phar-
maceutical companies with in-house R&D capabilities
in the early exploratory and pre-clinical stages of
drug discovery research. Modern early-stage drug
discovery hinges on the efforts of multidisciplinary
project teams where specialists from diverse knowl-
edge domains need to continually coordinate their
knowledge creation (Drews, 2000; Sams-Dodd, 2005).
Table 1 gives an overview of typical drug-discovery
knowledge domains.
1312 Academy of Management Journal August

This site also displays pervasive and inherent task
uncertainty, because drug-discovery specialists fo-
cus on what is unknown about the behavior of
chemical compounds and the biological causes of
a disease (Dougherty & Dunne, 2012; Grandori, 2010;
Northrup, 2005). A critical concern in drug discov-
ery is that of minimizing side effects. Under the
precautionary principle (Aven, 2011), pharmaceu-
tical companies are accountable for proving that new
drugs will not cause the public significant harm.
Scientists’ everyday work must therefore be guided
by a strong sense of obligation to be cautious in the
context of task uncertainty. Thus we expected that
this extreme setting would enable us to elaborate
theory (Lee, Mitchell, & Sablynski, 1999) on the
mechanisms whereby coordination of knowledge
creation across interdependent specialized knowl-
edge domains unfolds in multidisciplinary teams.
Due to a personal contact of one of the authors with
a senior executive at DrugCo, we received full access
to examine everyday work in early-stage drug dis-
covery teams. This access is unique because much of
the knowledge creation precedes patenting; early-
stage drug discovery processes are thus typically off
limits to outside field researchers.
Data Collection
Our early discussions and interviews with key
informants showed us that developing an in-depth

TABLE 1
Examples of Knowledge Domains in Drug Discovery Project Teams
Knowledge Domain Expertise Examples of Activities Examples of Artifacts and Tools

Medicinal chemistry Designing and synthesizing
molecular compounds with the
aim of developing drug-like
compounds
Molecular modeling Computationally designing new
molecules binding specifically to
the target molecule
In-vivo biology Designing and conducting animal
experiments to link target protein
with disease state of the model
High-throughput Developing and operating HTS
screening (HTS) assays to rapidly identify a large
number of potential drug-like
molecules (hits)
Biochemistry Developing biochemical assays to
assess the activity of target
proteins
Molecular biology Cloning and genetic engineering in
bacteria or mammalian cells
Pre-clinical safety and Assessing toxicology and safety
toxicology profile of drug compounds
Finding ways of effectively
synthesizing new compounds;
designing new compounds with
improved activity, stability,
selectivity, or safety profiles
Running computational algorithms
to fit molecules to target proteins;
docking fragments in the binding
pocket of the target molecule;
predicting the binding of
molecules to target
Injecting drug molecule in animal
models; preparing and staining
tissue sampled from animal
models; observing disease state of
animals
Scaling up assays; preparing
samples for HTS screening;
maintaining screening
infrastructure; interpreting HTS
screens
Producing proteins in bacteria or
mammalian cells; harvesting and
purification of proteins; designing
new assay formats (e.g., read-out
of assays); conducting the assays
Cloning genes in bacteria;
generating “knock-out” animal
model that misses specific genes;
comparative analysis of genomes/
gene sequences
Conducting safety and toxicology
experiments with compounds;
compiling safety profiles of
molecules; anticipating patient
population in clinical
development
Chemical molecules; solvents;
glassware (e.g., distilling column,
clamps, boiling flasks, funnels);
tongs; test tubes
Computational infrastructure and
hardware; 3D glasses;
computational algorithms;
software; three-dimensional
rendering of molecules and target
proteins; online databases
Tissue samples; animal models;
colored pictures of tissues; in-vivo
laboratories with hutches
Screening infrastructure; well
plates; pipetting robots;
compound libraries; lists with
activity profiles for over 10,000
compounds
Proteins; bacteria; bio-reactors used
for growing bacteria and
mammalian cells; infrastructure
to purify the proteins; Petri dish
DNA; gene sequence; “laminar
flow” workstations; database;
cells; bacteria; gene sequencer;
DNA amplifier
Lists and slides with safety profile of
compounds; experimental set-up
to conduct safety and toxicology
experiments; data from clinical
trials of benchmark compounds
2016 Ben-Menahem, von Krogh, Erden, and Schneider
and rich understanding of how knowledge creation
is coordinated required the use of purposeful sam-
pling (Patton, 2002) of informants within drug dis-
covery projects with different conditions. Drawing
on initial interviews and informal discussions with
accessible senior managers, and reviews of the lit-
erature on knowledge creation, coordination, and
scientific research, we sampled informants from five
project teams with maximum variation along four
salient conditions: (1) novelty of the target, (2) stage
of the trajectory, (3) therapeutic area, and (4) number
of research sites.
First, novelty of the target refers to the extent to
which the link between a biological target (e.g., the
disease-causing gene) and a final medical indication is
understood at the outset of the drug discovery project.
A target is novel if little is known about how a drug
molecule “modulates” it (Eder, Sedrani, & Wiesmann,
2014).5 Novelty may influence the length of the pro-
cess (Sams-Dodd, 2005) and shape scientists’ ability
to foresee interdependencies (Carlile, 2004) through
both the availability of external information, such as
relevant reports and peer-reviewed papers (Edwards,
Isserlin, Bader, Frye, Willson, & Yu, 2011), and the
extent to which scientists benefit from past in-house
experience (Bresman, 2013). Second, as the drug
discovery process typically lasts five to six years
(Pammolli et al., 2011), we selected teams conducting
research activities at each stage of the drug discovery
trajectory, from the early identification and validation
of the target to later stages focused on identifying,
characterizing, and optimizing compounds involving
potential new drug molecules (Sams-Dodd, 2005).
Selecting projects along these different stages also in-
creased variance among team members’ experience of
working together. Such experience might impact
how effectively they coordinate drug discovery (Kotha
et al., 2013).
Third, distinct therapeutic areas achieve different
clinical success rates (Booth, Glassman, & Ma, 2003).
While success rates cannot be reliably predicted,
differences could reflect varying levels of uncertainty
in the underlying science (Ringel, Tollman, Hersch, &
Schulze, 2013). Fourth, previous studies suggest that
coordination effectiveness in geographically co-located
teams may differ from those in dispersed teams
(e.g., Pinto, Pinto, & Prescott, 1993; Srikanth &
Puranam, 2011). Number of research sites indicates
the co-location of project team members. Co-location
can shape coordination by enabling a richer dialogue
5 7
We assessed novelty of the target by consulting com-
pany specialists and analyzing the portfolio of past projects.
1313
(Carlile, 2002), facilitating situated learning processes
(Tyre & von Hippel, 1997), and influencing how team
members mutually adjust their work (Okhuysen &
Bechky, 2009). Table 2 summarizes the five projects
along these dimensions, with examples of core sci-
entific questions.
Data collection occurred in real time from spring of
2011 until early winter of 2012. As we progressed in
our data collection and analysis, we gradually de-
veloped a sense of how project team members co-
ordinated the knowledge creation process. Building
on our emerging insights, we used purposeful sam-
pling to select informants from all hierarchical levels
(project team leaders, senior investigators, investigators,
and research associates) and all specializations
across each of the three drug discovery depart-
ments: therapeutic indication (e.g., pre-clinical
safety), chemistry (e.g., molecular modeling), and
drug discovery technologies (e.g., structural bi-
ology). In so doing, we remained attentive to the
consistency of emerging patterns across these di-
mensions as well as across the five projects. Table 3
gives an overview of data sources.
The primary source was 68 semi-structured in-
terviews with scientists and senior managers directly
involved in drug discovery.6 Our data comprise 24
interviews with project team leaders/senior man-
agers, 28 with senior investigators (more experienced
laboratory heads with PhDs), 12 with investigators
(laboratory heads with PhDs), and four with research
associates operating the lab equipment. We conducted
63 interviews at the informants’ work sites (in
Europe and North America) and five by telephone.7
Interviews lasted between 60–90 minutes, and all but
two were recorded and transcribed verbatim. For the
two cases for which recording was not possible (at
the informants’ request), we took notes and wrote
detailed reports immediately afterward (Miles &
Huberman, 1994).
We asked these informants to describe their every-
day activities, responsibilities, project team work-
flow, interactions and interdependencies with other
project team members, and the challenges they faced
in drug discovery (Appendix A shows the interview
protocol). To keep the interviews close to the in-
formants’ practice, we used probing questions (Miles
& Huberman, 1994), asking for an in-depth account of
recent experiences and events, not for reflections on
vague concepts (Miller, Cardinal, & Glick, 1997).
6
Twelve informants were interviewed twice.
An overview of the interview data and observational
data are available from the authors upon request.
 1314

TABLE 2
Summary of the Five Project Teams
Stage in Drug Discovery
Project Novelty of Therapeutic No. of Research
Team the Target May 2011 Dec. 2012 Area Sites Exemplary Core Scientific Questions

CanPro1 Medium Lead identification Lead optimization Oncology 1 n Designing and synthesizing new compounds with optimized
pharmacokinetics (i.e., stability in human body) and safety
properties
n Establishing biological experiments in cells and in-vivo to
understand efficacy of compounds in living organisms
CanPro2 Very high Target identification Target identification Oncology 3 n Assessing the “druggability” of target (i.e., the potential to
generate compounds that bind with high affinity to that target)
n Analyzing signaling pathway in cells where the target is
involved
CanPro3 High Target validation Terminated (by Oncology 2 n Designing novel approaches to identify new hits (i.e.,
end 2012) molecular chemical molecules that modulate the activity of
the target)
n Validating the roles that the target plays in the development of
which disease states
AutoPro High Lead identification Lead optimization Autoimmune 1 n Optimizing compounds with regards to activity and selectivity
diseases n Identifying “new chemical matter” (i.e., new series of chemical
Academy of Management Journal

molecules that are distinct with regards to their molecular

structure)
InflaPro Very high Assay development Lead identification Inflammatory 1 n Confining “hit lists” generated through high-throughput
diseases screening (i.e., what are the compounds identified as “hits”
the team wants to take any further?)
n Establishing an in-vivo model (i.e., animal model) linking the
target with the disease molecule

Note: Stage in drug discovery follows Sams-Dodd’s (2005) classification: Target identification: identifying the disease-associated gene or gene product; Target validation:
determining the therapeutic value of the target in the therapeutic indication; Assay development: expressing the target in biochemical or cellular assay systems; Lead identification:
screening and selecting compounds for further optimization; Lead optimization: optimizing compounds for target affinity and selectivity.
August
2016 Ben-Menahem, von Krogh, Erden, and Schneider 1315

TABLE 3
Data Sources Across Projects
Project Team

Data Source CanPro1 CanPro2 CanPro3 AutoPro InflaPro Othera Total

Interviews Therapeutic indication specialists 6 6 4 1 7 1 25

(e.g., pre-clinical safety, in-vivo biology)
Chemistry specialists (e.g., molecular 5 4 1 6 8 1 25
modeling, medicinal chemistry)
Drug discovery technology specialists 5 2 5 3 2 1 18
(e.g., structural biology, high-throughput
screening)
Subtotal 16 12 10 10 17 3 68
Observations Project-team meetings 6 2 3 4 7 – 22
Sub-team meetings 5 2 2 2 5 – 16
Specialists’ informal discussions and 3 4 3 3 4 – 17
everyday lab work
Subtotal 14 8 8 9 16 – 55
Secondary Project team meeting slides; entries in project management database; research organization’s intranet;
data project team meeting minutes; scientific publications on disease background, target, and drug
candidates.

a
Interviews with project team leaders prior to the selection of the five drug discovery projects.

Our data also included non-participant observa-
tions of 55 instances of interactions among project
team members during project team meetings where
all specialist members—and occasionally other
stakeholders, such as senior managers—of a drug
discovery project unite, sub-team meetings of se-
lected project team members from various knowl-
edge domains, and specialists’ informal discussions
and everyday bench work within laboratory envi-
ronments. Due to confidentiality, we could not re-
cord these meetings. We took extensive field notes
on site to capture as much as possible of the con-
versation verbatim, and enriched these notes with
further contextual information after the observation
(Miles & Huberman, 1994). Moreover, we collected
archival data to contextualize our interviews. Data
included scientific publications, intranet entries,
documents from the online project management
platform, and minutes of meetings.
Data Analysis
The combined interview and observation data
consisted of 930 pages of single-spaced interview
transcripts (over 87 hours of interview recordings)
and 167 pages of field notes from observations. We
managed our data using NVivo 9, a software tool for
qualitative data.
Data analysis was done in three stages. First, to re-
construct project teams’ workflow of everyday activities
and to disentangle how scientists coordinated work
across knowledge domains, we initially engaged in
open coding of raw interview data (Strauss & Corbin,
1998). To contextualize the interview data, we used
field notes from observations and secondary data.
Data analysis occurred in real time, starting when
transcripts and field notes became available. Two
authors coded the interview transcripts until the
analysis stopped yielding sufficiently distinct first-
order categories. Each first-order category was labeled
consistently with informants’ terminology (e.g., first-
order category “branching out into sub-teams” corre-
sponds to interview excerpt “there is a scientific
question and we need to sit down and talk about it. So
why don’t we call a sub-team meeting to get those
people that are relevant together and hear everybody’s
input?”) (Gioia, Corley, & Hamilton, 2012). If coding
labels conflicted, we discussed and crosschecked
emerging codes to ensure that the data were particular
to a given code and did not become decontextualized.
Second, we used axial coding (Strauss & Corbin,
1998) to identify similarities and differences in
the first-order categories, and we aggregated corre-
sponding categories into second-order themes, giv-
ing them higher-order theoretical labels (e.g.,
“structuring around conjectural interdependencies”).
As the research design is aimed at elaborating theory,
we repeatedly consulted the coordination literature to
help us interpret the findings in the light of prior work.
In so doing, we aggregated second-order themes into
1316 Academy of Management Journal
higher-order theoretical dimensions (Gioia et al., 2012).
This second stage produced a data structure with three
aggregate theoretical dimensions. Figure 1 summarizes
this structure.
Third, we revisited the full data set in search of
emerging patterns and relationships between the
themes and theoretical dimensions. As we pro-
gressed toward a deeper understanding of these
patterns and relationships, we developed a preliminary
model of how knowledge creation was coordi-
nated in the project teams. Finally, to lend increased
credibility to our interpretations, we discussed our
emerging model with several key informants within
DrugCo (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Nag, Corley, &
Gioia, 2007).
FINDINGS
Knowledge creation at DrugCo involves coordina-
tion of specialists’ work at the project team level and
within emerging sub-teams. Following a brief de-
scription of a drug discovery project’s inception, we
first explain the two-tier structure within which
project team members assume different modes of
specialist work, either as sub-team “insiders” or sub-
team “outsiders,” each with its distinct responsibilities
for contributing to the knowledge creation process.
We next discuss three informal practices that enabled
specialists within these sub-teams to manage in-
terdependencies among their respective knowledge
domains (i.e., informal coordination practices within
sub-teams) and progress in knowledge creation. We
then explain how specialists create formal sub-team
structures within the confines of their project team
and dynamically restructure these sub-teams accord-
ing to conjectural and revealed interdependencies
(i.e., formal structuring around interdependencies). In
so doing, project teams accommodated the unpre-
dictable and continuously changing need for contri-
butions from different knowledge domains as the
process unfolded. Table 4 provides detailed informa-
tion on aggregate dimensions, second-order (emer-
gent) themes and their definitions, and additional
examples of first-order data.
Project Inception
Drug discovery projects originate when senior
scientists conduct individual laboratory experi-
ments to identify a disease-associated gene, protein,
or signaling pathway in cells (i.e., a target). In this
inception phase, specialists investigate, for exam-
ple, how the target behaves in the disease state. One
August
project team leader in biology (project AutoPro)
described the formation of a drug discovery project
as follows:
You have an idea for exploratory work to ensure the
target is druggable and. . .that it is really important. . . .
And then the complexity increases. . .you have to start
working with other people, developing assays, run-
ning a screen, and setting up a flow chart. But the
target validation does not really stop at a certain point
because we always need to evaluate how good the
target is in comparison to other targets. What are its
advantages? Does this target have certain safety as-
pects? Is it better than other targets in efficacy? What
are the indications that we want to focus on? You re-
ally have to develop a clear understanding of which
disease you want to target.
This excerpt illustrates that when initial evidence
looks promising, the individual scientist’s explo-
ration develops into a more complex project—a
team-based undertaking comprising specialists from
complementary knowledge domains within the
company. The initial individual exploration thus
leads to core scientific questions, each of which
foregrounds some missing scientific evidence on
proposed cause-and-effect relationships between
the molecular structure of compounds, the activity
of the target, or the disease state in living organ-
isms. These questions underlie the knowledge that
scientists need to create for the project to progress
toward clinical trials and the commercialization of
a drug.
The excerpt also shows that a compartmental-
ized approach to knowledge creation is insuf-
ficient for resolving core scientific questions:
The expertise for creating knowledge around
core scientific questions is situated within mul-
tiple knowledge domains. As a senior investigator
in molecular modeling (project InflaPro) noted,
“With ‘pure’ modeling we are not able to solve any
big problems in drug discovery. We must carefully
integrate our contributions with those from struc-
tural biology—the knowledge we have about structure-
activity-relationships, 8 chemical synthesis, and
pharmacology.” Advances on core scientific ques-
tions thus require project teams to coordinate in-
terdependencies among specialists from various
knowledge domains.
8
Structure-activity-relationships (SARs) describe the
causal linkages between the chemical structure of a drug-
like molecule (“structure”) and its biological activity on
the target (“activity”).
2016 Ben-Menahem, von Krogh, Erden, and Schneider
FIGURE 1
Overview of Data Structure
Specialist Work
DrugCo uses a two-tier structure to coordinate the
drug discovery process, with project teams forming
the first tier. Project teams disaggregate the drug
discovery process by delegating the responsibility
for answering core scientific questions to a second
tier of formally structured, self-managed sub-teams
consisting of specialists from within the confines
of the project team. 9 As a senior investigator in
9
Each project team includes between three to five sub-
teams at any time. Project teams on average include ca. 50
members, with about 20–30 members attending project
team meetings (laboratory technicians do not attend). Sub-
teams on average include 4–6 members (laboratory heads).
1317
structural biology (project InflaPro) notes, “The
project team meeting is rather formal. Experts that
don’t know particularly much about each other’s
work come together [here]. These meetings are
more about information exchange and discussing
what to do next at a very high and strategic level.”
Most in-depth day-to-day collaboration among
specialists unfolds at the sub-team level. The ad-
vantage of the sub-team structure is that it signifi-
cantly reduces the perceived complexity of the
process. As the same senior investigator adds,
“There are so many smaller sub-teams where the
actual work gets done. . .they do certain experi-
ments I’m not aware of, I’m simply not on their
mailing list. It would be too much information if I
were included there as well.”

TABLE 4
Aggregate Dimensions, Second-Order Themes, Definitions, and First-Order Categories
Aggregate Dimension Second-Order Theme Definition
Specialist Work Specialist Work of Project team members’
Sub-Team Insiders contributions to a sub-team
to which they belong.
Specialist Work of Project team members’
Sub-Team Outsiders contributions to a sub-team
to which they do not belong.
Informal Coordination Anticipatory Conforming Specialists’ efforts to understand
Practices Within the implications of their work
Sub-Teams for other specialists, and if
necessary, compromise their
domain-specific standards of
excellence to meet cross-domain
requirements.
Workflow Synchronizing Specialists’ efforts to understand
temporal interdependencies,
and to order and pace their
work accordingly.
1318
First-Order Categories with Examples of Interview Excerpts
c Bench work in laboratory environment: “My contribution. . .concerns the
strategy with respect to protein production, crystallization, selection of
what compounds to be crystallized. . . . All of that has to do with my
scientific expertise.” (CanPro1, senior investigator, structural biology)
c Modeling and computational analysis: “I conduct computational
investigation to predict a number of properties of compounds, such as
solubility, stability, or degradation [in the human body]. That concerns
modeling the interactions [between the compound and target] and also
includes statistical analyses.” (InflaPro, senior investigator, structural
biology)
c Updating the project team on findings and problems: “. . .you try to update
all the others [in the project team] on what is going on, which doesn’t
mean there’s no discussion. . . .” (InflaPro, project team leader, medicinal
chemistry)
c Questioning everyday work: “[In sub-teams] you are quite often doing
things in the usual way. Sometimes it’s quite beneficial to get challenged
and to rethink the processes.” (InflaPro, project team leader, medicinal
chemistry)
c Suggesting new approaches: “No one [outside our specialization] will tell
you: ‘Okay, you should make this type of modification because it will be
super active [in the animal model].’ Rather, [these outsiders] will be there
to help you to design or to guide you. . . . I think that’s very useful.”
(InflaPro, project team leader, medicinal chemistry)
c Orienting domain-specific activities toward cross-domain contributions:
“I consider myself a specialist in crystallography with the goal of being
Academy of Management Journal
a drug discovery scientist. My activities in crystallography should be
valuable to the discovery of new drugs; not the activities themselves
should be at the center stage but how they contribute to answering
scientific questions.” (InflaPro, senior investigator, molecular modeling)
c Compromising domain-specific standards of excellence to meet cross-
domain requirements: “A modeler can have brilliant ideas, but if
[medicinal chemists] are not synthesizing. . .it is useless. Sometimes the
molecular modeler designs the molecule in a way that is difficult to
synthesize. . . . After a discussion with the medicinal chemist or input
from a chemist we arrive at the molecule which is really visible in terms
of synthesis. . . you have to trigger this dialogue.” (CanPro1, senior
investigator, molecular modeling)
c Understanding temporal interdependencies: “To develop the
experiments I have to wait for the protein. I can’t do without. Similarly,
the specialist who makes the protein. . .needs to know whether he is
purifying the right thing, whether he loses activity.” (Senior manager,
screening technology)
August
 TABLE 4
(Continued)
Aggregate Dimension Second-Order Theme Definition
Cross-Domain Triangulating Specialists’ efforts to establish
the reliability of domain-
specific findings.
Formal Structuring Structuring Around Designing structural arrangements
Around Conjectural (i.e., sub-teams) that include
Interdependencies Interdependencies knowledge domains considered
relevant and responsible for
knowledge creation.
Restructuring Around Redesigning structural
Revealed arrangements
Interdependencies (i.e., sub-teams) by including
new
knowledge domains or
excluding
irrelevant knowledge-domains.
2016
First-Order Categories with Examples of Interview Excerpts
c Ordering and pacing specialist contributions: “Normally, the technology
guys take care of many projects in parallel. The structural biologist, for
example, could work on four to five projects in parallel. But his input is
very critical. . . . They just ask: ‘how long you can wait [for the results]?
Two weeks? One month?’ I then say: ‘For us this is critical, but depends
on you guys’ scheduling. At most we can wait one to two months.’ They
then try to manage it somehow.” (CanPro2, senior investigator,
medicinal chemistry)
c Aligning experimental conditions across specializations: “As I designed
my experiments, I was sitting together with the others who designed
[complementary experiments] before. We had to ensure that we aligned
several parameters and used the same experimental conditions. For
example, we had to make sure that we used the same substrate [for all
experiments].” (CanPro3, research associate, screening technology)
c Confirming domain-specific results: “I have seen many projects where in-
vivo data [generated by biologists based on cells or living organism] was
not fitting at all with in-vitro data [generated by biochemists based on
biochemical experiments with isolated target]. In our case, I would say,
for [one chemical series] we have a perfect match. In-vivo and in-vitro is
just a perfect match. I think that is the first time in the past ten years I have
seen that. It is very good.” (InflaPro, project team leader, medicinal
chemistry)
c Deciding which knowledge domains are relevant for answering core
scientific questions: “We also had sub-team meetings during the time we
worked toward establishing the [new screening experiments]. To do so,
we included two medicinal chemists, the biochemistry lab, and the
structural biologist.” (InflaPro, project team leader, medicinal chemistry)
c Branching out into sub-teams: “There is a scientific question and we need
to sit down and talk about it. So why don’t we call a sub-team meeting to
Ben-Menahem, von Krogh, Erden, and Schneider
get those people that are relevant together and hear everybody’s input?”
(CanPro3, senior investigator, biochemistry)
c Including new knowledge domains: “Once we have the structure [of the
target] and cannot explain it, we might also have to include [the structural
biologist] in our sub-team. We then have to work together, coordinate
efforts, and understand that piece of data.” (CanPro3, senior investigator,
biochemistry)
c Excluding irrelevant knowledge domains: “In the future, for example,
biophysics may not be that important anymore. Now we understand how
the molecules bind and we probably won’t go back to finding completely
new compounds. . .” (Senior manager, medicinal chemistry)
1319
1320 Academy of Management Journal
A core feature of the sub-team structure is that it
allows specialists to assume different responsibilities
in the knowledge creation process. For each core
scientific question, the mode of specialist work of
a project team member is guided by whether the for-
mal sub-team structure designates him or her as a sub-
team insider (i.e., a member of a particular sub-team
embedded within the larger project team) or a sub-
team outsider (i.e., a member of the larger project team
but not of that particular sub-team).
Specialist work of sub-team insiders. The spe-
cialist work of sub-team insiders refers to project team
members’ contributions to a sub-team to which they
(formally) belong, and involves day-to-day knowl-
edge creation activities and routine project team up-
dates in project team meetings. Specialists’ isolated
work (e.g., designing, modeling, conducting, and
interpreting experiment results) is the primary source
of input to knowledge creation within sub-teams. As
a senior investigator in medicinal chemistry (project
AutoPro) describes this work:
No doubt. . .discussions [with the modeler] are of
pivotal importance for medicinal chemists. Yet at one
point. . .we have to give it a try. We have to go back in
the lab, cook,10 and test the compound. We have to
generate results. After that, we can discuss things
again. I think that it’s very important. . .that we don’t
neglect the true chemistry activities. We still use most
of our time to actually cook the compounds.
To integrate the findings from individual experi-
ments conducted in different knowledge domains,
specialists share their results with other sub-team
members and jointly decide on further activities. A
project team leader in biology (CanPro2) comments:
“In sub-teams we really discuss issues in-depth. It’s
not about overview or strategy. . .it’s about science
and details.” A senior investigator in biochemistry
(project CanPro2) points out that the sub-team struc-
ture offers efficient knowledge exchange among those
specialists deemed necessary for resolving core sci-
entific questions:
I personally like these very focused meetings where
only those people involved in that scientific question
are there. [In sub-teams] we try to move things. We go
straight to the point. The other day we had a meeting
on protein purification. One hour later we knew ex-
actly what the others were doing, they knew what we
were doing, and we made some decisions for moving
forward.
10
Slang for “create a chemical reaction.”
August
Specialist work of sub-team insiders also involves
members’ responsibility for reporting their findings
in monthly project team meetings. As a project team
leader in medicinal chemistry (project AutoPro) ex-
plains, “project team meetings are about getting ev-
erybody on the same page and documenting progress.
However, to be honest, the real work is not done in
these meetings. It’s done on an everyday basis.”
Updating allows the project team (both sub-team in-
siders and outsiders) to jointly discuss how to proceed
with new results, and offers an opportunity for sub-
team insiders to receive potentially valuable input on
their work. As one senior investigator in biology
(project CanPro2) comments:
In project team meetings all the different specializations
meet again. Thus it could well happen that an outsider
to your domain has a completely different idea. He looks
at an experiment without having conducted it thou-
sands of times before. In sub-teams we sometimes make
decisions because we did so in the past. Having some-
body from the outside increases the chances of seeing
things differently, and it might result in cross-fertilizing.
In the sub-team we then deal again with solving the
issue, given our specialization in that field.
Specialist work of sub-team outsiders. The spe-
cialist work of sub-team outsiders constitutes the
contributions from project team members to a sub-
team to which they do not belong. Although spe-
cialists outside of the sub-team do not formally share
the sub-team’s responsibilities, they remain pivotal
to knowledge creation by questioning sub-team
members’ assumptions underlying experimental
designs and stimulating them to consider new ap-
proaches. As a senior investigator in medicinal
chemistry (project AutoPro) explains:
Having an outside view typically helps. If you are
“inside” you are frequently overwhelmed with details
and do not see the forest for the trees. Sometimes,
these questions from outside—which at first sight
might appear naive but sometimes really target the
very core of the problem—are helpful. [Outsiders]
might feel they don’t contribute something relevant,
but these contributions are usually highly valued.
The following excerpt from a team meeting of
project AutoPro illustrates such an exchange. A
member of the “hit list sub-team” 11 updated the
project team on the idea of expanding screening
11
A “hit” is a compound showing significant activity on
the disease target in the high-throughput screen, identified
as “hitting” the target.
2016 Ben-Menahem, von Krogh, Erden, and Schneider
efforts to new molecules. Sven, a structural biologist
outside the sub-team, observed:
Sven: “Maybe it doesn’t fit here, but I remember having
worked on a propeller-like compound we once identi-
fied in our experiments but never followed up on. Don’t
you think this could be an entry point for you guys?”
Rob (project leader): “Nice new input, you [the sub-
team] should definitively take Sven’s comment into
consideration. I suggest that you meet in the sub-team
again and come up with appropriate decisions.”
Such interventions by outsiders can prove valu-
able even in cases when they do not hold in-depth
knowledge about the sub-team’s work. An investi-
gator in medicinal chemistry (project CanPro2) ex-
plains: “There are [scientific questions] that are
outside my field. . .. [But] even if it’s not your field,
you have to ask questions, you can try to understand.
Even a naive question can trigger new thinking in
a scientist who knows his field in-depth. There are
never stupid questions.”
As a senior investigator in medicinal chemistry
(project InflaPro) points out, incorporating suggestions
from sub-team outsiders is ultimately voluntary: “I
think [an experienced biologist] would be able to sug-
gest things to [the medicinal chemists]. It might well be
that the chemists didn’t think about it. The chemists,
however, then decide whether or not they would like to
consider that suggestion and go forward with it.”
Informal Coordination Practices Within
Sub-Teams
Within sub-teams, specialists need to manage their
cross-domain interdependencies in day-to-day activ-
ities. Managing interdependence is paramount—yet
inherently demanding—for answering core scientific
questions assigned to the sub-team. As a senior in-
vestigator in medicinal chemistry (project AutoPro)
explains:
Clearly, most challenges we face are beyond pure
chemistry. I would label [such problems] as true drug
discovery activities. . .they are by far the most chal-
lenging ones. Consider, for example, how to optimize
chemical compounds according to the data we get
from pharmacokinetics, in-vivo activity, stability, or
other assays. As soon as you improve one parameter,
the others drop immediately. It’s like packing a suit-
case that is already jam-packed: As we try to close one
lock, the others for sure won’t be lockable any-
more. . .and nobody knows why [laughter]. These are
the main problems we face.
1321
Our analysis identified three informal coordinating
practices that specialists use to manage cross-domain
interdependencies in sub-teams: anticipatory con-
forming, workflow synchronizing, and cross-domain
triangulating (see Table 5 for examples). While spe-
cialists performed diverse work (e.g., modeling and
experimenting), used specialized jargon, and adhered
to values and standards of excellence unique to their
domains, these informal coordination practices were
consistent across levels, domains, and projects.
Anticipatory conforming. Anticipatory con-
forming refers to specialists’ efforts to understand
their interdependence with other knowledge domains
in terms of the implications of their work for that of
the specialists, and if necessary, compromise their
domain-specific standards of excellence to meet cross-
domain requirements. A senior investigator in high-
throughput screening (project AutoPro) explains:
We have to design our assays such that they support
the medicinal chemists’ decision-making in the best
possible ways. For instance, we first go for binding
assays with the inactive enzymes. These offer the best
possible starting point for finding binders of a partic-
ular class—even if we, the assay developers, would
prefer working with the active enzyme from the be-
ginning. The latter would be more interesting for us.
Also, I always have to think about whether the hits we
identify are interesting from a medicinal chemistry
perspective. For instance, a compound might involve
a very challenging synthesis. These thoughts are very
important for moving on with the problem of finding
new potential drug-like compounds.
The following excerpt exemplifies this comment.
Two sub-team members of project InflaPro—Alex,
a structural biologist, and Chris, a medicinal chemist—
discussed which of two selection criteria Chris could
use to reduce the hit list: the compound’s “IC50”
values or the medicinal chemist’s more subjective
assessment of “chemical attractiveness”:
Alex: “I don’t get what chemical attractiveness means.
That’s very fuzzy to me.”
Chris: “Well, it’s indeed fuzzy. It’s basically the me-
dicinal chemist’s gut feeling. . .hard to put in words or
numbers. It’s whether or not we like a molecule—for
a variety of reasons.”
Alex: “Yes, for a variety of reasons, precisely. That’s
hard to understand for non-chemists. I would go for
IC50 to select the next round of compounds.”
Chris: “Are you sure? I would go for chemical
attractiveness.”
1322 Academy of Management Journal August

TABLE 5
Informal Coordinating Practices Within Sub-Teams: Interview Excerpts
Anticipatory Conforming

“Being a good medicinal chemist is simply not enough. It’s not sufficient to plan and cook interesting compounds. It requires much more
involvement with the sub-team. Fitting my knowledge contribution to the other disciplines is precisely what makes this job so exciting.”
(CanPro1, project team leader, medicinal chemistry)
“We have to think about what a ‘good’ compound really means. A good compound actually is not the one looking nicely on my screen and being
highly active. It’s one that still is active and medicinal chemists can actually synthesize.” (AutoPro, investigator, molecular modeling)
“There is absolutely no point in modeling a compound when you know that the chemist won’t it take up. For instance, I worked in a team where
the chemists were clear about not including any Alpha atoms in the molecules—even if it was quite popular at that time. So I of course did not
include any Alpha atoms in the molecules I modeled. I have to accommodate to the preferences of others in the sub-team. . .they are also
involved in answering that scientific question.” (InflaPro, senior investigator, molecular modeling)

Workflow Synchronizing

“We would like to study the pharmacological profile of some compounds. This implies that the pharmacologists should not be waiting with the
animals. We have to ensure that chemistry produces enough compounds so that they can properly scale up production. Similarly, the protein
production specialist must deliver in time to the crystallographer so that he can then start determining the three-dimensional shape of the
target protein.” (InflaPro, senior investigator, molecular biology)
“I talk to the crystallographers, and to the person doing nuclear magnetic resonance, so I know what they are expecting of me in the near future.”
(CanPro2, research associate, structural biology)
“We have a close interaction [with the assay development laboratory] because when we finish our compound the next step takes place in [this]
laboratory.” (AutoPro, research associate, medicinal chemistry)

Cross-Domain Triangulating

“It would be a dream scenario if we would find a hit in our biochemical screen that is also independently found to be a hit in the cellular screens.
That would more or less be the validation that the hit we have found also shows cellular activity. However, chances are pretty slim. We are
talking about two experimental set-ups with different sensitivities. Of course . . .essentially we design the assays such that they should inform
each other. In fact, the goal is to get hits coming from the cellular assays and to test them in the biochemical assay and vice versa.” (CanPro2,
project team leader, biochemistry)
“In case the team wants to know [how the drug molecule binds to the target], they send it to me. I perform the crystallization and might confirm
that what the modeler and the chemist predicted was perfectly accurate. Yet there are also situations where this is not the case...” (CanPro3,
investigator, structural biology)
“The goal is to make the validation [of the target] scientifically more sound. . . . Over time, the goal is to gain confidence that what you are doing
really has an effect at the end and delivers value to the patient.” (AutoPro, senior investigator, medicinal chemistry)

Alex: “But why?” effective resolution of the sub-team’s core scientific

Chris: “We could go for IC50 as well. That’s very fine
with me—anyway, from a chemistry point of view we
would prefer IC50. It’s much easier to justify. . . .
However, do you really want to crystallize yet another
benzyl amide?” [overall laughter]12
This example illustrates specialists’ vigilance
about the requirements and possible challenges of
other sub-team members’ work. The medicinal
chemist preferred selecting compounds based on the
“IC50” criterion. However, anticipating that apply-
ing this criterion would complicate the work of the
structural biologist (who was unfamiliar with that
criterion), the medicinal chemist “relaxed” his
domain-specific standards of excellence to allow an
12
Compounds belonging to the structural class of “ben-
zyl amides” were known for being tough nuts to crack.
question (how to reduce the hit list).
Conversely, when sub-team members are un-
aware of or disregard the requirements of other sub-
team members, progress on core scientific questions
is at risk. For example, in a sub-team meeting of
project InflaPro, molecular biologist Adam pre-
sented the results of his analysis to structural bi-
ologist Mike and biochemist Roger (both relying on
Adam’s findings):
Adam: “You can say that the [amino acid X] corre-
sponds to [type A] and [amino acid Y] corresponds to
the [type B]. We could use that for differentiation.”
Mike: “I’m not sure about that.”
Roger: “No, Adam is right.”
[Adam continues explaining how to differentiate be-
tween the two amino acids.]
2016 Ben-Menahem, von Krogh, Erden, and Schneider
Mike: “You forget that this site is masked. We cannot
use it.”
Adam: “Ah, OK, I didn’t know that. I just looked at the
sequence.”
Roger: “So what can we conclude with regards to
species differences? What species would you recom-
mend for toxicity studies?”
Adam: “That’s why you wanted to know about spe-
cies differences. I don’t know. I didn’t look into
that. . . .”
Roger: “So the conclusion is that we first have to know
in depth the binding mode and then select the
species.”
[As Mike explains his requirements, Roger suggests
ending this discussion.]
Roger: “In the interest of time, could we do that off-
line? Because, besides you two, nobody can follow at
the moment.” [overall laughter]
Adam: “No, but it’s important. Now I’m starting to
understand what you really want.”
During Adam’s updating, it became apparent that
he did not know all cross-domain requirements
when conducting his experiments—and thus could
not contribute to the core scientific question.
Workflow synchronizing. Workflow synchroniz-
ing refers to specialists’ efforts to understand tem-
poral interdependencies, and order and pace their
work accordingly. A project team leader in medici-
nal chemistry (project CanPro3) explains:
The pharmacologist tells me that he needs to grow
some tumor in mice and that this will take him three
weeks after injecting the cancer cells into the mouse.
The tumor then starts to grow, and in three weeks the
mice are ready for treatment with the compound. If
you wait for more than three weeks, the mouse dies.
So you have to have the compounds ready three
weeks from now. That’s essentially what we dis-
cuss. . .whether I am ready with the compounds then.
Another project team leader in biology (project
AutoPro) further explains that, to prioritize their
work, specialists need to understand each other’s
needs:
When we do multi-disciplinary activities. . .people
have like ten different things they need to achieve
every day. . .and so what might be my priority may not
be the priority for the colleague, and vice versa. That’s
why. . .I think it’s always complex, but communica-
tion is a big one. . .just really ensuring that the right
1323
people have the right information and understand
what is expected of them.
Cross-domain discussions on temporal interde-
pendencies aid specialists in providing meaningful
contributions to the sub-team. In the following ex-
cerpt (project InflaPro), in-vivo biologist Tim dis-
cusses his planning with fellow sub-team members:
Tim: “I might start working on developing new bio-
markers in mice now. I have some free resources in the
lab.”
Linda: “We don’t know yet whether we really need
these biomarkers in mice or humans. We have to wait
for others’ input here.”
Ralph: “We need to act according to the project pri-
orities and think about that at a later stage. . .”
By pointing out the temporal interdependence
between Tim’s and other specialists’ work, his col-
leagues ensured the timeliness of Tim’s contribution
by deferring his intended activities.
Cross-domain triangulating. Given the precau-
tionary principle in drug discovery, the value of
knowledge created within the bounds of specialists’
knowledge domains derives from the degree to
which specialists consider such knowledge reliable.
In establishing the reliability of their contribu-
tions, specialists are dependent on other knowledge
domains. Cross-domain triangulating refers to spe-
cialists’ efforts to establish the reliability of domain-
specific findings. The following statement from
a senior investigator in molecular modeling (project
CanPro1) illustrates how the uncertainty in the
characteristics of novel compounds and their bi-
ological effects necessitates such triangulation:
In biochemical assays you have many artifacts. . .
some of the compounds that we are screening are
not pure, some are doing strange things to proteins.
Especially when you don’t know anything about
the target—when it is a really new target—you
always wonder: Is this something real? The
modeler—if he knows the pocket and its target very
well—can really make a connection with the struc-
ture. . .because he can see what it is like in 3D and
check on the computer whether your idea was right
or not.
Specialists use cross-domain triangulating to
scrutinize the findings and assumptions in their own
work. In so doing, they either gain confidence that
their output can feed into later stages of the pro-
cess or become aware of inconsistent findings that
necessitate more work. In describing an in-vitro
1324 Academy of Management Journal
experiment in a mouse model, a senior investigator
in molecular biology (project InflaPro) explains how
cross-triangulation involves close interaction be-
tween sub-team members:
At the very beginning, it was really actually going
back and forth. . .we had many discussions because
when I come up with a question, [the X-ray specialist]
looks into a sequence and comes back to me to make
sure—when he starts to look into the structure—
whether he understood the problem correctly, you
know, that he has a structure in front of his eyes. Then
we discussed. . . . We looked at the structure together
and he explained to me. . .[and] also [asked me] what I
think that this amino acid could be. . . . Of course at the
end [the X-ray specialist] is the one solving the
structure, and he is the expert in the field, but it was
really going back and forth, and questions came
iteratively.
Finally, triangulating findings across specialized
domains involves sensitivity to the pragmatics of
specialists’ language and dedicated efforts to resolve
misunderstandings. As a project team leader in me-
dicinal chemistry (project InflaPro) comments:
Between chemists and biology we have to have the
same platform of discussion, of language, just to be
sure that they can exactly understand what I want.
Sometimes, as chemists, we are using biological
words in the wrong sense. For example, last time [the
biologist] said this compound was “nicely absorbed,”
and now she says that the compound was “badly
absorbed.” For me it is nicely absorbed when it is
metabolized. [She] said: “No, for me ‘nicely absorbed’
means that you retrieve the parent compound in the
blood after some time, it does not mean that it is
absorbed and then you have metabolism. That is not
the same.” So you have this small discrepancy in
language between specializations and have to be sure
you are on the same page.
By engaging in a discussion on the domain-
specific meaning of “nicely absorbed,” the chemist
and the biologist could prevent that the chemist
wrongly interpreted the biologist’s findings. As this
excerpt shows, triangulating with sensitivity to the
particulars of their counterpart’s knowledge domain
is a key requirement for effective cross-disciplinary
interactions.
Formal Structuring Around Interdependencies
New core scientific questions and progress on
existing questions prompt project teams to continu-
ously consider which combinations of knowledge
August
domains are most optimal for moving the drug dis-
covery process forward. Formal structuring around
interdependencies refers to the process by which
project team members collectively decide which of
the specialized knowledge domains from within
the project team’s confines are relevant and inter-
dependent for resolving a particular core scientific
question, and then structure ad hoc sub-teams by
selecting and grouping specialists accordingly. Proj-
ect teams thus continuously (re-)establish the grounds
for substantive interactions in sub-teams.
Structuring around conjectural interdependencies.
Decisions to include specialists in sub-teams are
primarily driven by project team members’ collec-
tive appraisal of the need for expertise with respect
to specific core scientific questions. The following
excerpt illustrates the formation of a sub-team in
project CanPro1: Bill, a senior investigator in high-
throughput screening, updated the project team
(including project leaders Ann and Ryan) on his
insights from a large screening of 1.5 million mol-
ecules, which resulted in the identification of
roughly 25,000 compound hits. For practical use in
future experiments, the hit list must be reduced to
fewer than 5,000 compounds:
Ann: “Should we start anticipating the criteria for
restricting the hit list to 5,000 compounds now?”
Ryan: “Yes, we need a sub-team here to come up with
some criteria for decision-making.”
Ann: “Ryan and I should probably think about who
should be included. . . .”
Bill: “We need to have a chemist join that sub-team.
Different chemists think about the same problem in
different ways. Here we need different viewpoints.”
As the need for expertise is contingent on the
largely unknown nature of novel scientific problems
and unpredictable outcomes of sub-team specialists’
knowledge creation efforts, structuring around in-
terdependencies among knowledge domains is es-
sentially a conjectural undertaking—as specialists
are well aware. Asked how cross-domain interac-
tions emerge, a project team leader in medicinal
chemistry (project AutoPro) explains:
It is very important to realize that compared to other
industries, where the process is really well defined, in
our business this is not the case. I like to compare it
with [a local newspaper] we visited a few years ago.
There it was very obvious that [while] of course they
don’t know what they will write [about] the next
day. . .it’s very certain that the newspaper will be
2016 Ben-Menahem, von Krogh, Erden, and Schneider
published the next morning, no matter what is in
there. . . . So everything has its well-defined stages: At
this time of the day you have to have this, and then it
goes to press, and at night it gets distributed, and the
next day you always have your newspaper. And for us
it is basically: [In] the morning you come. . .you think
you have a brilliant idea, you try to do an experiment,
and in the evening or maybe days later you realize that
this was not the right approach. . .you cannot plan for
this. [Y]ou try the first approach, and realize that this
is not the way it works, so you have to look for alter-
natives. . . . You ask around, you contact different
people. . . . There’s no right answer, you get different
opinions...and go in one direction or the other. So it’s
not that one exactly knows what comes next.
As this excerpt shows, the uncertain nature of the
drug discovery process imposes limits on specialists’
ability to predict which knowledge domains become
relevant at what time.
Structuring around conjectural interdependencies
was a consistent pattern of activities whereby spe-
cialists across DrugCo’s project teams formally co-
ordinate knowledge creation. Figure 2A shows how
an initial conjecture about interdependencies among
specialized knowledge domains relates to sub-team
formation. In this example, a sub-team consisting of
specialists in medicinal chemistry, biochemistry,
and in-vivo biology is formed within the broader
project team, which also includes specialists in mo-
lecular modeling, pharmacology, etc.
Restructuring around revealed interdependencies.
Sub-teams are formed with the intention of combining
those specializations that can jointly create knowl-
edge until a core scientific question is answered. In
practice, however, specialists often need to re-
structure the initial sub-team when new findings or
obstacles reveal interdependencies with knowledge
domains not yet represented. As a senior manager
observes: “[S]ome of the team members become less
important, some become more important, some that
are less important now can become more important at
a later stage, so there is a coming in and going out.”
While specialists are mindful of the changing impor-
tance of knowledge domains throughout the drug dis-
covery process, interdependencies among specialists
arise unpredictably.
For example, in the following excerpt from project
CanPro1, the sub-team was using a rat model to study the
potential interference of the target with a human meta-
bolic reaction. While sub-team member Lucy, an in-vivo
biologist, proposed an experimental design to the project
team, Cam, a pre-clinical safety specialist outside her
sub-team (but on the project team), commented:
1325
Cam: “Were rats really the best species to look at?
Mice could be similar to humans.”
Lucy: “We assumed rats to be similar to mice and thus
to humans. I wouldn’t have expected any differences
between rodents.”
Cam: “Probably there is a difference. We could have
a look at it, if you want us to.”
Lucy: “Very good point. We definitely should test
whether a rat responds similar to a mouse. Could you
do that?”
Exercising their specialist work responsibilities
in this way—Lucy as a sub-team insider and Cam as
a sub-team outsider—thus revealed an unpredicted
interdependence between their respective knowl-
edge domains. To answer its core scientific question,
Lucy’s sub-team now appeared to rely on Cam’s do-
main specific knowledge on how to test the poten-
tially dissimilar response of rodents. This newly
revealed interdependence triggered the restructur-
ing of the sub-team by including Cam in Lucy’s sub-
team after the meeting.
Table 6 shows examples of obstacles that were
resolved through sub-team restructuring around
revealed interdependencies, and implications of
restructuring for knowledge creation. As the project
CanPro3 example shows, unpredicted interdepen-
dencies even appeared during standard procedures.
Figure 2B illustrates a restructured sub-team (com-
pared to the initial structure in Figure 2A)—with
molecular modeling now included but in-vivo bi-
ology excluded.
Restructuring sub-teams during the project team
meetings was critical for overcoming obstacles in
drug discovery. The decision to restructure could be
initiated and influenced both by sub-team insiders
and sub-team outsiders, and depended on the extent
to which project team members could recognize
the problems with the current sub-team structure,
and whether the members agree to move to change
the structure. Yet the ability to restructure stood in
constant tension with the potential hazard that sub-
team members would tenaciously search for solu-
tions within the safety of their current configuration.
In the following excerpt (project CanPro1), medici-
nal chemist Helen and toxicologist Zoe update the
project team on their sub-team’s difficulties with
understanding why important compounds test pos-
itive on toxicity:
Leon (project team leader): “So your recommendation
would be to optimize the compounds based on other
1326 Academy of Management Journal
FIGURE 2
Formal Structuring Around Interdependencies
parameters and then get back to the [toxicity test]
again?”
Helen: “It’s really important data. If the compound
really is positive here all my options are gone. I want
to give it another try [to optimize the compound].”
Zoe: “We [toxicology specialists] can take that up
offline in a meeting with the chemists.”
Paul (senior manager): “I don’t think we should let the
chemists further work on that. The risk is too high.
This is too much.”
Zoe: “I would really like to understand what makes
these compounds become positive here. We have to
understand that in more detail.”
Sub-team members Helen and Zoe’s suggestion to
further modify the compounds and redoing the tox-
icity tests illustrates that relinquishing conjectural
interdependencies often proves difficult. In such
cases where uncertainty emerges from the sub-team’s
findings without pointing to alternative courses of
action, specialists tended to continue to model and
experiment within existing structures.
EMERGENT THEORETICAL MODEL
The findings revealed distinct types of formal and
informal coordination: formal structuring (of sub-
teams) around interdependencies, and informal
coordination practices within sub-teams (i.e., antic-
ipatory conforming, workflow synchronizing, and
August
cross-domain triangulating). Given these findings,
we propose a model of how formal coordination
structures and informal coordination practices in-
terweave in multidisciplinary self-managed teams
creating knowledge under unpredictable interde-
pendence (see Figure 3). First, we explain how the
formal structure establishes a foundation for spe-
cialist contributions to knowledge creation and fos-
ters the emergence of informal coordination practices
that enable interdependent specialists to integrate
their efforts. Second, we show how informal coordi-
nation practices can trigger changes in formal coordi-
nation structures. The model captures the process
through which multidisciplinary project teams man-
age the continuously changing demand for expertise
by dynamically restructuring those sub-teams to
which the project team had delegated specific parts of
the knowledge creation process.
The Mutual Constitution of Formal Coordination
Structures and Informal Coordination Practices
From formal coordination structures to informal
coordination practices. Formal structuring in self-
managed multidisciplinary project teams involves
the selection and grouping of project team members
into sub-teams. This process is guided by project
team members’ collectively held assumptions about
interdependencies among their respective knowl-
edge domains for knowledge creation. Two mecha-
nisms underlie the link between the formal structure

Project Team
InflaPro (project team leader, biology)
AutoPro (research associate, medicinal
chemistry)
CanPro1 (senior investigator, molecular
modeling)
CanPro2 (senior investigator, assay
development)
CanPro3 (investigator, structural
biology)
TABLE 6
Examples of Restructuring Around Revealed Interdependencies
Obstacle
Standard experiments did not result in
identification of any new compounds:
“Finding new compounds for [this
target] is really challenging.”
Fluorescent “tracer molecule” that tracks
the location of the target protein in
tissues did not show any activity: “One
part [of the molecule] should bind to [the
target] and the other part should be
fluorescent. The molecule is one
hundred percent pure, but it’s just not
fluorescent. So what is happening
there?”
Experiments to identify new active
compounds yielded no results (i.e., the
sub-team ran out of molecules that
medicinal chemists could further
optimize): “The difficult part now is to
find potent molecules in a biochemical
compound. . .it’s a really new target so
you have to start from scratch. Usually
it’s rather difficult to get compounds
with high potency. However, this is
necessary for having a chance of seeing
some results in the following steps.”
Hit list with hundreds of compounds had
to be reduced to have a workable set of
compounds for optimization: “. . .the
laboratory showed a hit list from that
biochemical screen that included 776
compounds.”
Purification of the target—a routine
activity—could not be carried out with
the typical protocols: “[The target] was
very difficult in terms of purification. . . .
Normally [purification] is very fast and
we all did that during our PhD and
postdoc time. We [i.e., the non-
specialists] typically do everything on
our own.”
Restructuring Around Revealed
Interdependencies
A group of specialists in high-throughput
screening—who could run assays with
new read-out—was included in the sub-
team.
A specialist in structural biology—who
had the unique domain knowledge to
investigate how the tracer molecule
might mechanistically bind to the target
based on three-dimensional
models—was included in the sub-team.
A specialist in molecular modeling was
added to the sub-team to run
computational algorithms to identify
complementary compounds.
A specialist in structural biology was
included in the sub-team to check
whether there could be complementary
selection criteria applied for confining
the number of compounds.
A specialist in protein purification was
included in the sub-team to develop
a new protocol for effectively purifying
the target.
2016
Implications for Knowledge Creation
“[The screen] generated new chemical
matter for the chemists to work on. . .and
that was something really good because
it’s usually a big effort to run a high-
throughput screen and yes, they did
it. . .it worked out.”
“[The structural biologist] was like: ‘Oh,
yeah the spacer is not long
enough. . .there might be some
interaction between the [target] and the
fluorophore. Maybe the spacer should
be bigger because on the other molecules
the spacer is bigger.’ So now we
redesigned the molecule with a bigger
spacer and another way of connecting.”
Molecular modeling resulted in
identifying new
compounds—complementary to the
ones identified based on biochemical
assays: “[Molecular modeling] was the
most powerful approach for developing
the right molecules. . .the molecular
modeler had the most important
contribution here, I would say.”
Different specializations included in the
Ben-Menahem, von Krogh, Erden, and Schneider
sub-team conducted complementary
experiments to triangulate the structural
biologist’s findings across knowledge
domains: “It turned out there was
a reactive site on the surface of the
protein that was giving us a fair amount
of background [i.e., false positives].”
“As we needed a purified target for [further
experimentation], it just happened that
he was probably the best person to carry
out this activity. He could make a high
quality target protein very quickly.”
1327
1328 Academy of Management Journal
FIGURE 3
A Model of the Mutual Constitution of Formal Structuring and Informal Coordination Practices
and the informal practices that specialists use to
manage interdependence in multidisciplinary teams:
(a) delegating responsibility for knowledge creation in
relevant knowledge domains and (b) developing team
members’ awareness of interdependencies.
First, formal structuring allows project team mem-
bers to decompose tasks and delegate responsibility
for parts of the knowledge creation process to sub-
team members. Project teams thus reduce the overall
complexity of coordination among specialists from
different knowledge domains. By associating mem-
bership in different categories of team structures
with different responsibilities for knowledge creation
(e.g., establishing the safety of a new compound), the
formal structure conveys information about how
project team members are expected to contribute
(i.e., in terms of norms and behavioral patterns; cf.
Bechky, 2006). This part of the formal structure
functions as a cue for specialists to cognitively asso-
ciate themselves as sub-team insiders or outsiders.
Such self-categorization (McCall & Simmons, 1978;
Stryker, 1980) prompts specialists to enact a corre-
sponding mode of contribution that involves either
actively creating in-depth domain-specific knowl-
edge or employing their expertise in an outsider role
(Turner, Oakes, Haslam, & McGarty, 1994).
At DrugCo, specialists across the five project teams
had an implicit yet broadly shared understanding
August
that the specialist contributions expected from
a sub-team insider (e.g., computational analysis and
modeling) differed substantially from those ex-
pected from sub-team outsiders (e.g., questioning
everyday work and suggesting new approaches).
Once project team specialists joined a sub-team,
their responsibilities changed to include a direct
involvement in resolving core scientific questions.
Second, in creating a formal structure that stipulates
(sub-)team membership and defines the configuration
of interdependent knowledge domains, specialists
shape their shared mental representation of the web of
interdependencies in which their work is embedded.
Using the category of a sub-team, specialists develop
a social awareness of how their contributions relate to
those of other specialists in the collective endeavor
(Tomasello, Carpenter, Call, Behne, & Moll, 2005), and
infer which interactions to prioritize (Baumeister &
Masicampo, 2010; Puranam et al., 2012). Developing
awareness—albeit conjectural—of interdependencies
is particularly relevant for coordinating knowledge
creation in a multidisciplinary and uncertain context.
It elevates the target of specialists’ efforts to the
collective team level, thus mitigating the danger of
specialists’ narrowly interpreting their knowledge
creation responsibilities within their own domain. As
specialists often engage in knowledge creation activi-
ties in isolation, without taking interdependencies into
2016 Ben-Menahem, von Krogh, Erden, and Schneider
account, such a narrow domain-specific interpretation
of responsibility is a common problem in multidisci-
plinary work, severely limiting the relevance of spe-
cialists’ contributions and hampering integration.
Given these two mechanisms, the relationship
between the formal structure and the emergence of
informal coordination practices can be understood
in terms of specialists’ efforts to manage conjectural
interdependencies in a way that allows them to fulfill
their responsibility for knowledge creation. Spe-
cialists are the primary individuals responsible for
creating knowledge while under scrutiny by other
team members whose needs and evaluation criteria
they can only partly anticipate—due to both task
uncertainty and lack of common ground between
knowledge domains (Lerner & Tetlock, 1999). Spe-
cialists thus tend to exert themselves to develop
a deep, accurate understanding of how they can
contribute to the team’s overall tasks (e.g., De Dreu,
Nijstad, & Van Knippenberg, 2008). As a result, they
may intensify their engagement with other sub-team
members to search for, disseminate, and integrate
information (e.g., De Dreu, Koole, & Steinel, 2000).
Our analysis shows that, to this end, sub-team
members draw on the three informal coordination
practices that we conceptualized as anticipatory
conforming, workflow synchronizing, and cross-
domain triangulating.
From informal coordination practices to formal
coordination structures. Two important features of
informal coordination practices stand out. First, in-
formal coordination practices help shape specialists’
work such that it contributes to the sub-team’s col-
lective task. In so doing, informal coordination prac-
tices enable specialists to cope with the unpredictable
nature of cross-domain interdependencies. Specifi-
cally, anticipatory conforming involves specialists’
vigilance in exercising their responsibility for
knowledge creation by contemplating how applying
domain-specific norms and behaviors for knowledge
creation impacts the work of others. Such a vigilant
approach compels seemingly interdependent spe-
cialists to specify the nature of their shared tasks and
shape domain-specific knowledge creation efforts
such that they contribute to achieving the team’s ob-
jective. Through workflow synchronizing, specialists
create a mutual understanding of temporal interde-
pendencies among team members. They can thus at-
tend to their domain-specific responsibilities for
knowledge creation in a timely manner and flexibly
readjust the team’s overall workflow when new in-
sights emerge. Cross-domain triangulating enables
specialists to scrutinize the validity of their approach
1329
and the value of their findings across disciplinary
boundaries. By seeking confirmation from other
knowledge domains, specialists check whether their
responsibility for contributing to the team’s collective
effort is fulfilled. These informal coordination prac-
tices allow specialists to make their work more
predictable across domains, thus facilitating the
integration of their contributions with those of other
team members in a vigilant, timely, and collectively
validated way.
Second, informal coordination practices encour-
age specialists to redesign formal coordination
structures. The need for restructuring might arise
from progress in knowledge creation leading to new
scientific questions that prove difficult to answer
within the current configuration of knowledge do-
mains. Alternatively, specialists might encounter
difficulties in producing predictive knowledge
(Puranam et al., 2012) and fulfilling their responsi-
bility for knowledge creation while using informal
coordination practices within the context of the
existing formal structure. In such cases, they may be
unable to meet the needs of other specialists (Pfeffer
& Sutton, 2000), attempt to provide contributions at
inappropriate points in time, or repeatedly produce
dissonant findings for unknown reasons.
Experiencing such limitations of the formal struc-
ture encourages specialists to take a more skeptical
attitude to initially conjectured interdependencies
and collectively reconsider the relevance of knowl-
edge domains beyond the confines of the present (sub-)
team structure. Such a response can be explained by
specialists’ need to reduce the fear of creating invalid
knowledge and avoid costly misapprehensions when
the stakes involved in their activities are high (e.g.,
Mayseless & Kruglanski, 1987). In our case, running
unnecessary or ill-timed experiments was very costly
and could severely disrupt progress of the drug dis-
covery project. Moreover, drawing false conclusions
about the efficacy and safety of new compounds could
significantly harm the public, the firm, and individual
scientists (Aven, 2011).
In DrugCo, sub-team specialists routinely reported
their findings (or lack thereof) to the project team dur-
ing monthly meetings. This allowed project team
members from a wider set of knowledge domains to
exercise their “outsider” responsibility to knowledge
creation by posing questions to sub-team members and
providing suggestions. In many instances we observed,
the constructive comments and questions of project
team members revealed interdependencies among
knowledge domains spanning the sub-team’s bound-
aries. This process prompts specialists to formally
1330 Academy of Management Journal
transition into (and out of) sub-teams whenever doing
so appears valuable for progressing in collective
knowledge creation. In such a way, project teams dy-
namically activate specialists’ responsibility for knowl-
edge creation and resolve incongruencies between the
formal team structure and newly discovered interde-
pendencies. This continuous structural adaptation is
critical for coordinating specialists’ contributions in
multidisciplinary teams when task uncertainty is so
intense that no one can anticipate either the interde-
pendencies or the outcomes.
DISCUSSION
Despite their potential for making radically new
and valuable discoveries, multidisciplinary teams
face significant coordination challenges involving
the division of labor and integration of specialists’
efforts (e.g., Cronin & Weingart, 2007; Dougherty,
1992; Latour & Woolgar, 1986). Motivated by an in-
creasing disconnect between design and practice-
based perspectives on these “universal problems of
organizing” (Puranam, Alexy, & Reitzig, 2014), this
paper contributes integrative theory on how special-
ists in multidisciplinary teams coordinate knowledge
creation in the face of unpredictable interdepen-
dencies. By simultaneously examining formal and
informal coordination mechanisms, this study offers
new insights into their mutual constitution, with im-
plications for research on both organizational design
and practice-based coordination.
Implications for Research on Organizational
Design
Our study contributes to design-based theories of
coordination and knowledge creation. Traditional
contingency perspectives on organizational design
emphasize the merits of creating team structures that
match the team’s information-processing requirements
arising from its task environment (e.g., Donaldson,
2001; Galbraith, 1977). An implicit assumption in re-
search drawing on this structural contingency frame-
work is that organizational designers choose team
structures by accurately assessing interdependencies
among organizational members. Contrary to this as-
sumption, our study shows that in the context of
knowledge creation, organizational members may ex-
perience significant difficulties in designing optimal
formal team structures around interdependencies.
Specifically, our findings highlight the inability to un-
derstand the relevance of certain knowledge domains
ex ante (i.e., during the initial design stage), and the
August
problem of unforeseeable outcomes of the knowledge
creation process. Our study thus suggests that theoret-
ical accounts of how multidisciplinary teams co-
ordinate knowledge creation cannot be reduced to
explaining how designers of team structures optimally
allocate tasks among specialists and integrate members’
efforts within static systems of interdependencies.
This study contributes to understanding how
structural design unfolds under uncertain conditions
that cause organizational members to face unknown
and unpredictable interdependencies (e.g., Cardinal
et al., 2011; Grandori & Soda, 2006; Miles, Snow,
Mathews, Miles, & Coleman, 1997; Sherman & Keller,
2011). Our model proposes that the process of de-
signing and adapting formal structures around con-
jectural and revealed interdependencies can result
from specialists’ self-managed knowledge creation
efforts. Within structures formally designed around
conjectural interdependencies, specialists enact in-
formal coordination practices, which not only help
them to develop predictive knowledge, but also pro-
pel them to collectively search for and discover new
interdependencies. To accommodate newly revealed
interdependencies, project teams flexibly reallocate
the responsibility for knowledge creation among
project team members from different knowledge do-
mains, thereby adjusting the (sub-)team composition.
Our theorizing about why this design dynamic oc-
curs in a context of knowledge creation under un-
certainty brings together the literatures on team
design and team-level information processing rooted
in lay epistemic theory (Kruglanski, 1989; Kruglanski &
Webster, 1996). In line with motivated information
processing theory (De Dreu et al., 2000), our findings
show that bearing the responsibility for knowledge
creation without possessing the necessary predictive
knowledge to integrate their activities (Puranam et al.,
2012) propels team members’ “willingness to ex-
pend effort to achieve a thorough, rich, and accurate
understanding of the world” (De Dreu et al., 2008: 23).
Furthermore, we show that such “collective in-
formation processing” efforts have important implica-
tions for overcoming obstacles in team knowledge
creation (Schippers, Edmondson, & West, 2014) by
increasing members’ understanding of not only the
nature and intensity (Knudsen & Srikanth, 2014;
Puranam & Raveendran, 2013; Sherman & Keller,
2011) but also the scope of latent interdepen-
dencies that shape formal structures.
Our findings also enrich the literature on structural
adaptation in teams. A longitudinal interpretation of
arguments underlying structural contingency theory
(Thompson, 1967) leaves open many issues about
2016 Ben-Menahem, von Krogh, Erden, and Schneider
how structural designs adapt over time as task con-
ditions change (Cronin, Weingart, & Todorova, 2011;
Hollenbeck et al., 2011). The relatively few studies
that explore the process and outcomes of structural
adaptation conclude that appropriate coordination
and communication behaviors are necessary for
teams to adapt (Hollenbeck et al., 2011; Moon et al.,
2004). Yet whereas prior empirical evidence on
structural adaptation primarily concerns structures
with fixed membership and relatively broad, over-
lapping knowledge domains (Hollenbeck, Beersma, &
Schouten, 2012), our study offers in-depth insights
into structural adaptation through ongoing flexible
(re)configuration of highly specialized knowledge
domains.
This feature of our model displays close links to
Bigley and Roberts’ (2001) findings from a study of
fire departments. They found that, to adapt largely
formalized organizational structure to complex and
volatile task environments, designers tend to rely on
variable structuring mechanisms, such as assigning
roles and tasks to human resources, reassigning
personnel to different positions, or deferring in-
formal decision-making authority to more qualified
individuals.
However, in Bigley and Roberts’ study, designers of
organizational structures could draw on reasonably
well-defined tasks and interdependencies among di-
versely skilled individuals and so implement struc-
tural change in a top-down fashion. Our theoretical
model complements and extends these findings in the
context of cross-disciplinary knowledge creation by
showing that structural adaptation does not necessi-
tate an “omniscient designer” (Puranam & Raveendran,
2013) “inscribing” his or her intentions on a team by
structuring it (Orlikowski, 2008). Nor does it require
team members to hold an accurate representation of
the optimal interdependencies that connect them
(Puranam & Swamy, 2011). Instead, we propose that
specialists’ conjectural, tentative representations of
interdependence, in conjunction with their informal
coordination practice, provide a basis on which
structural team designs in highly uncertain contexts
can evolve in the direction of fit (Cardinal et al., 2011;
Siggelkow, 2002).
Implications for Practice-Based Research on
Coordination
This study also contributes to practice-based re-
search focusing on how coordination of expertise un-
folds in situations with high complexity, rapid change,
and uncertainty. This stream of research—drawing
1331
primarily on “high-reliability” or “fast response” or-
ganizations (e.g., Faraj & Xiao, 2006; Klein, Ziegert,
Knight, & Xiao, 2006; Majchrzak, Jarvenpaa, &
Hollingshead, 2007; Weick & Roberts, 1993)—
emphasizes the critical role of informal flexibility
enhancing and improvisational coordination mecha-
nisms. Our theoretical model confirms these obser-
vations and adds that to cope with the changing
nature, intensity, and scope of interdependencies
emerging in knowledge creation, team members
practice coordination through a combination of an-
ticipatory conforming, workflow synchronizing, and
cross-domain triangulating.
However, our model also differs from past work
that primarily focused on how informal practices
compensate for inertial forces of formal, hierarchical
role structures (Klein et al., 2006) but that paid lim-
ited attention to the potential interaction between
informal coordination practices and formal co-
ordination structure (Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009). In
contrast, we emphasize that informal coordination
practices are inherently embedded within and cir-
cumscribed by formal structures (Valentine &
Edmondson, 2015), and demonstrate that formal
structures provide critically important—albeit
tentative—guidance for specialists to practice co-
ordination in multidisciplinary knowledge-creating
teams.
By illuminating this relationship, our model fos-
ters the integration of practice-based research with
the literature on the enabling effects of formal
structure (e.g., Adler & Borys, 1996; Bresman &
Zellmer-Bruhn, 2013; Cardinal, 2001; Jelinek &
Schoonhoven, 1990). Specifically, we propose that
the need for flexibility and adaptability in multidis-
ciplinary knowledge-creating teams arising from
unpredictable interdependencies cannot be fully
met by informal coordination practices (e.g., Bruns,
2013). Our model suggests that in complex multi-
disciplinary teams comprising specialized indi-
viduals facing highly uncertain tasks, knowledge
creation relies on formal team and sub-team struc-
tures as a source of flexibility. Specialists draw on
formal structures not only to make sense of their
sub-team responsibilities (cf. Valentine & Edmondson,
2015) but also to develop a vital awareness of the
changing web of interdependence within which
their knowledge creation efforts have a collective
bearing.
Without the ability to derive these cues from the
formal team and sub-team structures, using co-
ordination practices to develop cross-domain pre-
dictive knowledge and integrate specialists’ efforts
1332 Academy of Management Journal
would become highly time consuming and costly.
The decomposition of teams into sub-teams around
conjectural interdependencies among specialists
greatly reduces the complexity of collective knowl-
edge creation, and thus establishes the grounds for
informal coordination practices. Sub-team structur-
ing allows specialists to allocate attention to their
specific responsibilities in knowledge creation and
manage a narrower scope of conjectural interdepen-
dencies relevant for the uncertain tasks at hand. The
model shows that such complexity reduction is an
important condition for coordination practices to af-
fect the managing of both current and emerging in-
terdependencies. The coordination practices that we
uncovered demand intense personal interaction in
smaller groups if they are to effectively ensure ev-
eryday coordination among sub-team members, adapt
coordination structures, and safeguard knowledge
creation within higher-level organizational struc-
tures. This feature of our model contributes a valuable
understanding of how the dynamics of two-tier
structuring interacts with coordination practices.
On a related note, as practice scholars have often
sought to uncover fallacies in the logic underlying
the design perspective (Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009),
they may have paid insufficient attention to the
conditions under which coordination practices en-
able effective organizational structures. Notable ex-
ceptions include Brown and Duguid (1991), who
proposed that effective organizational structures
should be designed around social practices wher-
ever these practices are effective for solving organi-
zational problems.13 Following a reverse logic, our
theoretical model shows how coordination practices
manifest the limitations of an existing configuration
of knowledge domains and thus trigger structural
adaptation. We therefore argue that to fully under-
stand how coordination of knowledge creation
across a team’s knowledge domains unfolds when
interdependencies are unpredictable, managers and
organization theorists need to consider the recursive
effects between the team’s formal structure and the
emergence of informal coordination practices.
Boundary Conditions, Limitations, and Directions
for Future Research
Although our findings yield valuable insights into
a phenomenon that has remained largely inaccessible
to scholarly fieldwork, they should be interpreted in
13
For an alternative analysis see: von Hippel and von
Krogh (2016).
August
light of this study’s boundary conditions and limita-
tions. Our study focuses on self-managed teams with
the discretion and power to change their structures.
Previous studies have suggested that the impact of
structures can depend on the extent to which em-
ployees are involved in their formation and the degree
to which these structures are aligned with their own
goals (Adler & Borys, 1996; Langfred, 2007). There-
fore, the autonomy of project team members in
forming structural arrangements should be consid-
ered a relevant boundary condition to the relation-
ship between informal coordination practices and
the structural adaptations explained in our model.
Moreover, given the importance of the precaution-
ary principle in drug discovery and scientists’ high
awareness of the potential safety implications of
mistakes, our research setting might reflect specific
characteristics of members’ attitudes toward task un-
certainty. Similarly, previous research has suggested
that distinctive characteristics of the science-based
context (e.g., high task uncertainty and complexity)
are important contingencies in project design
(Cardinal et al., 2011; Pavitt, 1999).
Given the five- to six-year length of a typical drug
discovery trajectory, our limited observation interval
could not cover the complete trajectory of any one
project. Although we were able to study co-
ordination in the early to late stages of drug discov-
ery, we are cautious about making claims about
causal relationships between our findings and the
ultimate success or failure of the drug discovery
projects we studied. Future studies should examine
the extent to which the structural adaptations and
informal coordination practices we observed impact
project performance. Moreover, as in any single-
site study, the distinctive characteristics of the
case company mean that further empirical research
should examine to what extent our theoretical model
is transferrable to different firms in the same industry
or to varied sites in which multidisciplinary teams
face similar coordination challenges.
Another avenue for future research relates to our
finding that as teams of specialists collaborate to cre-
ate knowledge, interdependencies among knowledge
domains change over time. This finding is important
for the literature on the relationship between in-
novation performance and distance among specialist
knowledge domains (e.g., Fleming, 2004; Kotha et al.,
2013), because it implies that knowledge distance is
a dynamic aspect of multidisciplinary teams. Further
investigation of the evolution of knowledge distance
within teams might thus add important new insights
to the coordination literature.
2016 Ben-Menahem, von Krogh, Erden, and Schneider
Practical Implications
This study has three important practical implica-
tions. First, it indicates that a mix of coordination
structures and practices are necessary for knowledge
creation in multidisciplinary teams facing intense
task uncertainty. Managers must provide sufficient
autonomy and resources for such project teams to
self-manage interdependencies. Specialists must have
time and slack resources both to formally restructure
the sub-teams and recruit specialists as needed, and
to develop subtle, interpersonal coordination prac-
tices. Second, to manage cross-disciplinary interde-
pendencies and enable vigilant, timely, and collectively
validated integration of efforts, the specialists we
studied sometimes had to forgo their domain specific
standards of excellence for the sake of the team’s
collective outcomes (cf. von Krogh, Haefliger, Spaeth,
& Wallin, 2012). This suggests that performance ap-
praisal in fundamental discovery needs to take
a comprehensive view of specialists’ contributions to
the team’s shared objectives. Importantly, managers
should avoid the “appraisal trap,” whereby they
evaluate individual effort and skill based exclusively
on predefined standards within knowledge domains.
Third, we found that sub-team outsiders—while
not considered directly responsible for knowledge
creation—contribute substantially to the work of
sub-team insiders. Managers cannot force specialists
to externalize their (tacit) knowledge (Osterloh &
Frey, 2000), especially if these specialists do not feel
responsible for a particular task. Instead, managers
should encourage them to mutually support one
another’s work and take an interest in the project’s
overall progress through, for example, mentoring
and training programs, project debriefings, and pe-
riodic social events.
CONCLUSION
This study examined how multidisciplinary teams
coordinate knowledge creation while facing un-
predictable interdependencies among knowledge
domains. Our findings from early-stage drug dis-
covery teams suggest a dynamic relationship be-
tween formal coordination structures and informal
coordination practices. By continuously designing
formal sub-team structures around conjectural in-
terdependencies, project teams adaptively delegate
responsibility for knowledge creation to relevant
specialists. We show that formal structures not only
reduce the complexity of collective knowledge
creation at the project team level but also enable
1333
specialists in sub-teams to engage in informal co-
ordination practices of anticipatory conforming,
workflow synchronizing, and cross-domain tri-
angulating. These informal coordination practices
facilitate the integration of knowledge creation ef-
forts and propel specialists to reveal new interde-
pendencies that establish the ground for structural
adaptation. Given the mutual constitution of these
formal and informal coordination mechanisms in
cross-disciplinary knowledge creation, this study
underscores the necessity of further integrating or-
ganizational design and practice-based perspectives
on coordination.
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Shiko M. Ben-Menahem (benmenahem@ethz.ch) is a senior
researcher and lecturer in the Department of Management,
Technology, and Economics at ETH Zurich. He received his
PhD from Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus
University. His research interests include organizational
and team design, coordination of knowledge intensive work,
and organizational renewal and innovation.
Georg von Krogh (gvkrogh@ethz.ch) is the Chaired Professor
of Strategic Management and Innovation at ETH Zurich. He
is also a member of the National Research Commission of the
Swiss National Science Foundation. Georg has published
widely on topics such as organizational knowledge creation
and technological innovation. His current research focuses
1338 Academy of Management Journal
on the effectiveness and efficiency of different approaches to
innovation within and between firms.
Zeynep Erden (zerden@ethz.ch) is a senior researcher and
lecturer in the Department of Management, Technology, and
Economics at ETH Zurich. She received her PhD in man-
agement and organization theory from ETH Zurich. Her re-
search interests include creation and coordination of
knowledge in teams, implementation of knowledge and in-
novation strategies in organizations, and their impact on firm
performance, especially in the pharmaceutical industry.
Andreas Schneider (andreas.schneider@ypsomed.com) is
a business development manager at Ypsomed Group. He
received his PhD in management and organization theory
from ETH Zurich. His research explores collaborative
knowledge creation practices and approaches to new
product development.
APPENDIX A
INTERVIEW PROTOCOL
• Can you tell me about your work and contribution
to [this project]?
• What does a typical workday look like for you?
• Which scientific questions do you try to answer in
this project?
• Follow up: Which scientific disciplines take part
in this process?
• Which other scientific disciplines did you interact
with until now to fulfill your work on this project?
How do you expect that to develop?
• How do project team members possibly differ?
• People here at [DrugCo] talk a lot about “integrated
drug discovery”: What does integration from your
point of view imply? How does integration hap-
pen in [your project]?
• How are decisions made about who does what and
when?
• Can you tell me about the different ways people
collaborate in your project?
August
• Follow up: How do they differ? How are collabo-
rations established? What are your experiences in
working in each of these forms of collaboration?
How does it influence your work?
• What enables you to work efficiently with other
disciplines?
• In collaborating with others, how do you develop
a shared view of the work and tasks you will
perform?
• How do you ensure that project team members
“are in the know”?
• What information do you share with other team
members?
• What material do you exchange with other
disciplines when interacting? Tell me about
a situation that shows how you exchange
materials.
• How do you process and prepare information be-
fore sharing it with other team members?
• How do other project team members enrich what
you know?
• To what extent do you need to understand other
scientific disciplines to do your work?
• Can you tell me about the technologies you use in
this project? How do these technologies relate to
workflow in the project?
• Can you guide me through an example of how you
draw conclusions from data?
• Can you tell me about how you collaborate with
others when drawing conclusions from data?
• Questions about project-teams and sub-teams
when these were specifically mentioned as forms
of collaboration:
• What feedback do people give each other in sub-
team meetings, project-team meetings?
• How do you contribute to sub-team meetings,
project-team meetings?
Note: Core questions are listed. The interview protocol
was adapted as we progressed in our data collection to
ensure its alignment with emerging insights. As a result,
different participants were asked somewhat different in-
terview questions.
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