Scientific and technological innovation introduces moral uncertainty. In response, stakeholders develop moral mandates – a type of external mandate in which expectations are imposed on organizations to get them to align with a moral cause (Choi, Augustine, and King, 2023), such as the call for organizations to improve diversity. Yet, moral mandates are often ambiguous (Choi, Augustine, and King, 2023). When organizations attempt to comply with ambiguous external mandates, there can be jurisdictional ambiguity, in that the work needed to implement the mandate is unclear (Augustine, 2021), and jurisdictional conflict, in that it may be unclear which occupational group has authority to interpret (or ignore) the mandate (Abbott, 1988). These issues may be exacerbated for moral mandates, which challenge existing occupational ethics (Wilensky, 1964; Abbott, 1988).

Often, responsibility for implementing moral mandates falls to peripheral actors with relevant expertise, like diversity officers (e.g., Kalev, Dobbin, & Kelly, 2006). Implementing moral mandates is difficult. Peripheral experts may struggle to keep their jurisdiction aligned to a mandate, given internal organizational politics, but can partially realign their work via concealed jurisdictional expansion (Augustine, 2021). In other cases, implementing a moral mandate involves influencing others. Literature demonstrates that peripheral experts leverage opportunity windows early in relationships with core experts to elicit cooperation (DiBenigno, 2020). However, research has not explicated how peripheral experts address ongoing instances of jurisdictional drift of core experts, especially when core experts believe they are appropriately enacting a moral mandate. Opportunity windows observed in prior research may be closed, preventing the use of known tactics. Further, occupational groups see their practices and morals as intertwined (Anteby, 2010), suggesting attempts to change core expert practices may constitute both an uninformed disruption to their work and an affront to their morality. This paper develops theory about how peripheral experts get core experts to address jurisdictional drift to more successfully implement a moral mandate.

This paper uses data from an 18-month ethnography of a team science project focused on improving data availability for artificial intelligence. The project was tasked with collecting a racially representative dataset for AI-catalyzed research in healthcare. They were given an ambiguous moral mandate to “ethically source” data; peripheral experts – ethicists – and core experts – clinical researchers – developed differing views about complying with this mandate. Peripheral experts were able to partially realign core experts’ work to their interpretation of the mandate by enacting “didactic friction” – ethicists took an instructive tone to frame perceived divergence from the mandate as harmful to participants and challenge the ethical norms of clinical research. The subsequent conflict disrupted the project such that it created an opportunity for another phase, “collaborative negotiation.” Core experts, wishing to maintain project momentum, negotiated with peripheral experts about aligning data collection practices with the mandate. This analysis suggests that didactic friction modestly changed practices by reminding core experts of shared commitment to the mandate and forcing collaboration to de-escalate conflict. Yet, didactic friction degraded relationships; core experts felt unfairly accused of being unethical, while peripheral experts felt their expertise was disregarded.