Human challenges at workplace in an era of AI

Exploitation of big data and AI are predicted to trigger a large-scale management revolution leading to, among other things, radically improved organizational performance. Consultants and researchers alike rush companies to change their cultures to succeed in adopting a data-centric view, and even to abandon old practices, such as reliance on human experience and intuition. We set out to find out how these changes unfold in an organization.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become an important topic in business literature and strategy talk. Yet, much of how managers and employees perceive AI "in the wild", in their workplaces, is unknown territory for both scholars and practitioners. We conduct micro-level research and set out to understand how members of different organizational groups react to the introduction of AI and job role changes that come with it. We depict a colourful, nuanced version of reality, fluctuating around the varied ways different employee groups encounter different AI-solutions in their daily work.

The popular discourse on technological change and its cataclysmic effects represents a technology-centric point of view, side-lining the role people have to play in this change. However, this management revolution is unlikely to succeed without thinking through the role humans have in turning this change into the transformational force it is predicted to become.

Preliminary findings warn against an unconditional technology enthusiasm, managerial ignorance of the work employees do, and a neglect towards time and effort required to successfully implement transformational technological change. Because of the novelty of the phenomenon, it is important to better understand not only the promises of technology and managerial aspirations associated with it, but also attitudes employees have towards AI as they first encounter it in their daily work.

Project leader:
Katja Einola

Project team:
Katja Einola and Violetta Khoreva

Keywords: AI, HRM, technological change, robots, big data

Publications:
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