Artificial Intelligence and Management: The Automation-Augmentation Paradox

Sammanfattning

Taking three recent business books on artificial intelligence (AI) as a starting point, we explore the automation and augmentation concepts in the management domain. Whereas automation implies that machines take over a human task, augmentation means that humans collaborate closely with machines to perform a task. Taking a normative stance, the three books advise organizations to prioritize augmentation, which they relate to superior performance. Using a more comprehensive paradox perspective, we argue that, in the management domain, augmentation cannot be neatly separated from automation. These dual AI applications are interdependent across time and space, creating a paradoxical tension. Over-emphasizing either augmentation or automation fuels reinforcing cycles with negative organizational and societal outcomes. However, if organizations adopt a broader perspective comprising both automation and augmentation, they could deal with the tension and achieve complementarities that benefit business and society. Drawing on our insights, we conclude that management scholars need to be involved in research on the use of AI in organizations. We also argue that a substantial change is required in how AI research is currently conducted in order to develop meaningful theory and to provide practice with sound advice.

Working Paper No. 355: The artificial intelligence (AI) data access regime: what are the factors affecting the access and sharing of industrial AI data?

Working paperPublikation

Bjuggren, P.O. & Long, V.

Ladda ner

Publiceringsår

2022

Publicerat i

Bjuggren, P.O. & Long, V.

Sammanfattning

This paper decomposes the factors that govern the access and sharing of machine-generated industrial data in the artificial intelligence era. Through a mapping of the key technological, institutional, and firm-level factors that affect the choice of governance structures, this study provides a synthesised view of AI data-sharing and coordination mechanisms. The question to be asked here is whether the hitherto de facto control—bilateral contracts and technical solution-dominating industrial practices in data sharing—can handle the long-run exchange needs or not.

Employee Empowerment and Paternalism: A Conceptual Analysis of Empowerment’s Embeddedness in Communicative Contexts

Artikel (med peer review)Publikation

Weidenstedt, L.

Publiceringsår

2020

Publicerat i

Mrev management revue

Sammanfattning

Empowerment as a management technique builds on the assumption that employees desire more power. Consequently, to a large extent, research on employee empowerment has focused on defining the type of power that should be contained in empowerment, identifying relevant mediating and moderating effects of and for empowerment as well as empowerment’s boundary conditions such as individual and social attributes. However, less research has dealt with communicative and relational aspects and how these may impact the outcome of employee empowerment. This paper uses an interactional perspective to conceptually analyse communicative meanings entailed in employee empowerment. Building on sociological theories of communicative interaction, it is argued that focusing on leaders’ and members’ ascriptions of meanings to each other’s communicative messages reveals paternalistic power structures that are of relevance for the failure and success of empowerment. A communicative analysis of common structural and psychological empowerment efforts suggests that members’ sensemaking of their roles and situations, as defined by formal (written) and informal (psychological) contracts, may not necessarily be in line with the communicative meanings intended by leaders’ actions, and vice versa.

Working paper No. 300: It Takes Two to Empower: The Communicative Context of Empowerment Change in the Workplace

Working paperPublikation

Weidenstedt, L.

Ladda ner

Publiceringsår

2017

Publicerat i

Ratio Working Paper

Sammanfattning

Empowerment efforts at the workplace are typically divided into two analytical categories: social-structural and psychological empowerment. These have been extensively researched in terms of their application and handling as well as their outcome and general usefulness in human resource management. However, less research has dealt with communicative aspects of empowerment and the communicative interactions between change agents (managers) and recipients (employees) that frame empowerment efforts. To contribute to a more nuanced empowerment discourse, this paper uses a micro-/individual-oriented perspective on empowerment communication and theorizes why empowerment change efforts sometimes end up being counterproductive – leading to disempowerment rather than empowerment. As starting point for theorizing empowerment communication, a “basic communicative structure” is identified and analyzed as comprising a contractual and a communicative context, referring to conditions as outlined in written employment contracts on the one hand, and implicitly shared and understood definitions of the social employment situation on the other. Building on sociological and social-psychological theories of communicative interaction, it is argued that focusing on change agents’ and recipients’ mutual ascriptions of meanings to each other’s communicative messages might improve empowerment outcomes: A communicative analysis of common empowerment efforts suggests that recipients’ sensemaking of their roles and situations as defined by written employment and/or psychological contracts is not necessarily in line with the communicative meanings they ascribe to the change agents’ actions, and vice versa.

Sammanfattning

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