The influence of artificial intelligence leadership on employee ethical decision-making

• Autor(a) principal: Tiago, Inês Rodrigues
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/35415
• topic: Artificial intelligence; Leadership; Ethics; Employee; Ethical decision-making; Job satisfaction; Feeling monitored; Public self-awareness; Code enforcement; Inteligência artificial; Liderança; Ética; Colaborador; Tomada de decisões éticas; Satisfação no trabalho; Sentimento de monitorização; Auto-consciencialização pública; Implementação de regulamentos; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

With technological evolution, artificial intelligence (AI) has gained relevance in the organizations, moving beyond its mechanical applicability in manufacturing, and up the supply chain to departments requiring analytical skills, like finance or operations. The expectation is that with recent advancements in language and response to emotion, AI will no longer be just a tool, but a coworker or even a manager to human employees. According to the literature, together with moral issue and individual characteristics, the organizational environment can be a significant detractor or enabler of employee unethicality, and the leader not only shapes this environment but directly influences employees’ morality in the workplace. This thesis focuses on how an AI leader influences employee ethical decision making. Additionally, it proposes that job satisfaction perceptions, code enforcement perceptions, the feeling of being monitored and public self-awareness partially mediate this relationship. Negative feelings towards AI could mean lower job satisfaction that would lead to less ethical decisions. The machine-like characteristics of AI could cause it to be perceived as more vigilant and as a stricter code enforcer, however, its human-like characteristics could drive employees to feel public self-awareness and act as they believe the leader wants them to, thus contributing to more ethical decisions, since people do not want to be punished or perceived as immoral. The results did not support any of the hypotheses. Nevertheless, this study expands the existing AI leadership literature and raises questions to point future researchers in new directions of study.