Knowledge that Transforms

Abstract As collaborations between humans and artificial intelligence (AI) have become increasingly prevalent across various industries, the role of leaders in managing these collaborations has grown in importance. While the existing literature has highlighted the benefits of leader management in these settings – emphasizing the complementary strengths of humans and AI – the potential costs to key stakeholders, particularly to leaders themselves, have been largely ignored. This research addresses this gap by drawing on moral relativism theory to develop and test a model explaining how leader management of human–AI collaborations may induce leaders’ moral relativism and, in turn, result in unethical behaviour at work. Furthermore, we identify leaders’ need for cognitive closure as a crucial individual difference that negatively moderates these effects. Findings from a critical‐incident experiment, two scenario‐based experiments, and one field survey conducted with samples from both Western and Eastern cultures (i.e., the United States and China) support our model.

Abstract Our work begins with the premise that the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into firm decision making parallels the emergence of the professional manager, which prompted the birth of agency theory. We examine the evolution of AI through an agency theory lens, considering how the nature of firm control and decision rights change as AI evolves. While AI will initially mimic human routines, we theorize a point at which the AI system will achieve a level of autonomy and self‐determination to be considered an agent of the firm. How, then, can we align an agent with the fate of the firm, when that agent is no longer a human? To address this, we integrate agency theory with a model of AI evolution, demonstrating that conflict between an AI agent and the firm will require a reconsideration of agency mechanisms if agent‐principal alignment is to be achieved. We theorize specific forms of monitoring and incentive alignment that serve to align an AI agent with the firm's interests, thus extending agency mechanisms in the context of AI. Our theoretical exercise offers important implications for scholarship at the intersection of AI and organizational theory, as well as considerations for practice and policy.

Abstract Ecosystem diversification extends joint value creation by developing new interdependencies between ecosystem actors while redeploying partners and their resources. Such diversification simultaneously generates tensions over ecosystem resources not controlled by the focal firm. This study examines how strategic leaders across organizational levels navigate these resource tensions. Based on a longitudinal case study of PetCo's diversification within the pet care ecosystem, we identify two types of ecosystem resource tensions – commensalistic and rivalrous – and show how each activates distinct patterns of leadership actions and outcomes. Commensalistic tensions prompt middle managers to lead peer‐level interactions that secure permissive partitioning of overlapping resources, granting multiple initiatives access to ecosystem resources. Rivalrous tensions, by contrast, require coordination across hierarchical levels, with senior managers intervening to enforce restrictive resource partitioning that limits or withdraws an initiative's access to resources, or, when senior and middle managers collaborate, to achieve permissive partitioning that sustains synergy across initiatives. We discuss implications for research on strategic ecosystem leadership and diversification.

Abstract Despite the evolution to a multipolar economic world during the past three decades, management and organization scholars around the world still largely employ a capitalist view from the United States as the normal state, with scholars analysing other economic contexts as some variation of such capitalism. Despite the fact that over 43 percent of the world's population lives in nations whose constitutions say the nation is socialist, management and organization scholars appear frozen in time, tied to a historical period when there was largely only one dominant economic model. Our Point is that when communities (nations or individual groups) pursue other economic forms, scholars need to consider that contextual setting, including the socialism, rather than simply assume a typical United States capitalist context as the foundation for research. We identify, define, and illustrate four varieties of socialism in this Point . In turn, we then demonstrate how scholars' understanding of the specific domain of entrepreneurship can be enriched if the socialism of the given context is addressed rather than capitalism assumed. Management and organization scholarship around the world should, moving forward, reflect the dynamics of each unique context, including the respective economic system in that given context, rather than continue to reinforce a United States epistemological hegemony.

Abstract In this paper, we adopt the so‐called ‘related’ perspective on business and government relations and propose that they interact and influence one another in governing corporate responsibility. We theorize that private and public governance may operate as complements or substitutes, and conduct a comparative institutional analysis to identify the institutional systems under which each form of interaction prevails. To illustrate our conceptual framework, we use the global diffusion of ISO 14001 as an indicator of the growing privatization of environmental governance and environmental stringency as a reflection of the strength and effectiveness of public environmental governance. Then, we empirically examine how ISO 14001 and environmental stringency interact to reduce corporate emissions across varieties of institutional systems. Contrary to the dominant view that public and private governance are substitutes, we propose that they can complement one another, depending on the institutional setting. Our results show that complementarity is more likely when the institutional systems follow a market‐based logic, such as in the liberal market economies, and when firms expand internationally. This finding holds after using alternative methodological approaches and more granular classifications of institutional systems. We discuss implications for governance research in management studies and practical implications for tackling grand environmental challenges.

Abstract We conducted a qualitative, real‐life study where we tracked the introduction, implementation, and use of a new AI technology in a company. We identified four distinct trust configurations among organizational members: full trust (high cognitive/high emotional), full distrust (low cognitive/low emotional), uncomfortable trust (high cognitive/low emotional), and blind trust (low cognitive/high emotional). Furthermore, we found that organizational members exhibited distinct behaviours under the four trust configurations: Some responded by detailing their digital footprints, while others engaged in manipulating, confining, or withdrawing them. These behaviours triggered a ‘vicious cycle’, where biased (due to manipulation) and unbalanced and asymmetric (due to detailing, confining, or withdrawing) data inputs degraded AI performance, further eroding trust and stalling adoption. Our primary contribution is a model that explains how organizational members behave under different trust configurations and how these behaviours affect AI performance and, ultimately, AI adoption in organizations. We also provide valuable insights for managers.

Abstract Business collective action (BCA) has long been a topic of interest to management scholars. However, our theoretical understanding of this important phenomenon has been hindered by its fragmented development in the literature. To address this shortcoming, we conduct a comprehensive review of BCA across a wide range of disciplines in management, including corporate political activity, private regulation, strategic management, and organizational institutionalism. Based on this review, we develop an integrative framework that identifies the triggers, outcomes, and internal political arrangements associated with BCA. In doing so, we help develop a common vocabulary that unites different market and non‐market forms of BCA, thus deepening our understanding of the role of business collective action in society.

Abstract Despite its promise to alleviate poverty through entrepreneurship, microfinance is widely used for household purposes, challenging Western assumptions of microfinance as entrepreneurial finance and raising questions about the viability of microfinance organizations (MFOs). To understand how microfinance persists despite such use, we conducted an embedded case study of a South African MFO operating in a rural, resource‐constrained context shaped by Ubuntu – a communitarian ethic emphasizing relational interdependence and mutual care. Drawing on scarcity theory and a practice‐based view of financial resourcing, we show how scarcity is collectively navigated through culturally embedded practices that stabilize loan‐use ambiguity in everyday microfinance interactions. We find that loan officers and recipients jointly enact three harmonizing practices – reverence for repayment, empathic financial support, and entrepreneurial discretion – that sustain this ambiguity between the MFO's espoused entrepreneurial schema and enacted livelihood‐oriented practices. Through these practices, microfinance remains viable as a community‐embedded system of financial support, even as loan use departs from formal entrepreneurial prescriptions. By conceptualizing microfinance as a community‐embedded system of financial resourcing rather than a narrowly entrepreneurial intervention, this study contributes to research on microfinance, scarcity, and resourcing in communitarian settings.

Abstract Artificial intelligence (AI) systems, evolving from reactive tools to proactive collaborators, reshape team dynamics in today's digital workplaces. Text‐based collaboration now frequently involves AI participants that perform tasks traditionally handled by humans, such as creative problem‐solving and decision‐making. This transition has been linked to changes in group dynamics, particularly in relation to social presence, which appears to shape the patterns of productivity and collaboration. We conducted three empirical studies on human–AI teams to investigate the relationship between social presence and willingness to depend on teammates, team‐oriented commitment, and motivation to contribute. Drawing on social presence theory and theory of planned behaviour, our results show that while social presence has a direct association with motivation to contribute, an equally important indirect pathway is associated with human factors like team‐oriented commitment and team members' willingness to depend on each other. We show that while social presence is significantly associated with behavioural intentions, greater AI familiarity and understandability are associated with a stronger relationship, raising questions about the sufficiency of relying solely on anthropomorphic features. Our study contributes to the understanding of human–AI collaboration in social presence research, highlighting the importance of considering social and interpersonal processes in hybrid teams. Our findings have managerial implications for organizations looking to adopt AI‐based systems for collaboration.